The Bar members' concerns

The three criminal benches there are in the High Court do not have any even distribution of workload among them. One of these benches purportedly passed one motion in the last two years. By a steep contrast, 700 to 800 cases hang fire in another bench, while the third one is wrestling with 700 cases. This could be evocative of certain reservations about the quality and efficiency of the judges. The practising Supreme Court lawyers have not minced words to say so.

Whilst, the constitution of criminal benches has been called into question, the Bar leaders despaired of fre-quent dissolution and reconstitution of benches on 'unknown grounds'. Dr Kamal Hossain thought these bred questions in the public mind about the process.

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The huge number of bail petitions moving up to the high judiciary has two implications: one, the failure of the magistrates and sessions judges' courts to dispose of bail prayers at their levels; and two, the High Court benches are thus left to shoulder a huge number of ap-peals for bail. One need not labour the point too much that other cases awaiting adjudication by the High Court per se get pushed down the attention scale.

In spite of the glut of petitions before the HC's mo-tion benches, it is at this level, anyway, that bails are granted, more often than not in high-profile cases. This lends itself to one interpretation, which is that the lower courts are susceptible to executive or political pres-sures. Why is the interpretation of law by the higher judiciary so radically different from that by lower courts in matters of granting bail? Obviously, the High Court is freer than the sub-ordinate courts which remain under executive control.

It is worthwhile to note though, that the Chief Justice reportedly called 11 senior judges to his office and told them not to grant wholesale bail and stay. The Bar president went so far as to suggest: that the CJ 'is not being able to constitute benches independently, be-cause of instructions from outside'. Does it mean that even the highest judiciary is not impervious to political influence-peddling?

What all this leads us to conclude is that separation of the judiciary from the executive is the crying need now, if we are to resurrect the dwindling public confi-dence in the rule of law.