THE breach of Supreme Court guidelines in the wholesale arrest of citizens suspected of being involved in the violence born out of the student protests that have sought reforms in civil service job reservations is unacceptable. While it is worrying that law enforcement agencies keep largely ignoring the Appellate Division鈥檚 10-point guidelines of May 2016 when they arrest citizens, what is doubly worrying is the breach of the nine-point guidelines that the court laid out for judicial magistrates to adhere to when they allow the arrested to be remanded in either prison or police custody. The law enforcers arrested at least 6,000 people centring on the protests and consequent unrest in July 15鈥�21. Legal experts say that the guidelines both for the law enforcers and judicial magistrates are breached in the current wave of arrests, detention and remand of students and leaders and activists of political parties in opposition in the cases filed in connection with the protests and vandalism. While the police have largely violated the guidelines and keep doing so, the police, however, keep claiming that they have not violated the Supreme Court guidelines.
A metropolitan magistrate on July 13 remanded five young people in police custody for interrogation for five days. The lawyer of one of the accused says that the magistrate has allowed the accused to be remanded although he was wounded. The lawyer also says that the investigation officer has not furnished the case docket for the magistrate. The Detective Branch on July 26 picked up at least three organisers of the student protests from Gonoshasthaya Nagar Hospital in Dhaka when they were being treated. The three earlier went missing when the protests turned violent only after the ruling Awami League front activists and the police had attacked the protests. When two of them reappeared, they had marks of injury and they narrated to the media how they were tortured during captivity. In almost all cases, the law enforcers have largely breached the guidelines by not always disclosing their identity at the time of arrest or detention and by not informing any relative of the place and reasons for the arrest in 12 hours of the event. The law enforcers have not mostly had a memorandum of arrest signed by the arrested with date and time after the arrest. In case, they have not produced the arrested in magistrate鈥檚 court in 24 hours after the arrest and have not allowed the arrested access to lawyers or relatives. The guidelines ask magistrates to proceed against any law enforcement officers under Section 220 of the Penal Code if the magistrates have reasons to believe that the officers are acting contrary to the law. No magistrate has so far been reported so doing.
The Appellate Division guidelines are meant to stop the police from doing excesses and save the public from facing police excesses. And, the breach of the guidelines in events at hand frustrates the purpose of the court guidelines and subjects citizens to harassment and repression. The government must, therefore, rein in the police. And, it is expected that higher judicial authorities would look into the affairs.