SC upholds HC bail for Mahmudur

The Supreme Court yesterday upheld a High Court bail granted to Mahmudur Rahman, acting editor of Bangla daily Amar Desh, in a sedition case.

A five-member bench of the Appellate Division of the SC, led by Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha, dismissed a petition filed by the government seeking a stay on the HC order granting him bail.

The apex court upheld the HC order on the grounds that the charge sheet of the case was not submitted before the trial court, but Mahmudur had been in jail for a long time, Attorney General Mahbubey Alam told The Daily Star.

He said Mahmudur would be released as soon as the SC order reached the jail authorities.   

Mahmudur's lawyer Muhammad Salahuddin told The Daily Star that as far as he was aware, his client had been accused in 70 cases and had obtained bail in all of them.

Sahidur Rahman, a prosecutor of the International Crimes Tribunal, filed the sedition case against Mahmudur with Tejgaon Police Station on December 13, 2012, under Information and Communication Technology Act, 2006.

In the case, Mahmudur was charged with sedition for publishing alleged Skype conversations between Justice Md Nizamul Huq, then chairman of International Crimes Tribunal-1, and Ahmed Ziauddin, an expatriate Bangladeshi legal expert.

According to the case statement, Mahmudur, by publishing the alleged conversation, created a negative impression of the tribunal at home and abroad and obstructed its proceedings.

Amid controversy, Justice Nizamul Huq, now an Appellate Division judge, resigned from the tribunal on December 11, 2012.

Mahmudur was arrested at his newspaper office in the capital's Karwan Bazar on April 11, 2013.

Following a bail petition filed by Mahmudur, the HC granted bail to him for six months in the case.

The government later on filed a petition with the SC seeking a stay on the HC order.