SC rejects Mosharraf's review plea

The Supreme Court yesterday dismissed a petition of BNP leader Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain seeking review of its guidelines for the High Court Division in granting anticipatory bail to him in a case.

A four-member bench of the Appellate Division headed by Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha passed the order terming the plea "dismissed as being time barred".

The petition was rejected as Mosharraf delayed in filing it, said Khurshid Alam Khan, lawyer of the Anti-Corruption Commission which filed the money laundering case against the BNP leader.

The HC on February 10 last year granted him anticipatory bail in the case.

Fourteen days later, the Appellate Division cancelled the bail order and issued some guidelines in granting anticipatory bail.

Review petitions against any SC order have to be submitted within 30 days of the order, according to the rules. Mosharraf, however, did it only last month, around 16 months after the bail was cancelled.

In its 2014 judgment, the Appellate Division also expressed disappointment at the HC bench for "failure to follow its guidelines" in giving anticipatory bail to Mosharraf.

The HC should have scrutinised the facts mentioned in the First Information Report with "expected diligence", and shouldn't have granted anticipatory bail "where the allegations are of heinous nature", it said.

"If satisfied in all respects, the HC will dispose of the anticipatory bail applications instantly without issuing any rule, and will not grant such type of bail to an accused for more than four weeks.

"Anticipatory bails shall not survive post-charge sheet stage," the judgment said.

The HC judges would have to mention the reasons for granting the bail and "give reasons for their satisfaction on this unravelling point," it went on.

"Political threshold of the [bail] petitioner or claimed rivalry, by itself, without further ado, shall not be a ground for entertaining an application," the Appellate Division added.