SC unhappy again over Sadman's bail

The Supreme Court yesterday expressed further dissatisfaction with a High Court bench for granting bail to Sadman Yaseer Mahmud, an accused in the blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider murder case.
A five-member bench of the Appellate Division of the SC headed by Chief Justice Md Muzammel Hossain yesterday also asked the government to submit a report before it within a week on whether Sadman had surrendered to the lower court as per its chamber judge's order.
On June 11, the SC chamber judge stayed an HC order that granted bail to Sadman, and directed him to surrender before a trial court within two weeks. An HC bench on June 1 granted six months' bail to Sadman, a charge sheeted accused of the case.
Rajib, an activist of the Shahbagh movement, was murdered in the capital's Pallabi on February 15 last year.
During hearing of the government's petition against the HC order of bail, Justice AHM Shamsuddin Choudhury Manik, a member of the Appellate Division bench, said that an HC bench grants 'wholesale bail' to the accused.
The SC questioned how the HC had granted Sadman bail without going through the confessional statement Sadman made before a magistrate.
Justice Shamsuddin Manik also asked Attorney General Mahbubey Alam what the government's position was in this case. The attorney general replied that HC had granted bail to Sadman though his office was not informed about the  bail petition.
Earlier in February this year, the Appellate Division expressed disappointment at the same HC bench for “failure to follow its guidelines” in granting anticipatory bail to BNP leader Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain in a money laundering case.
“Pitiably, the High Court Division failed to follow the guidelines that emanated from this Division time and again. We are, least said, dismayed at the paradoxical order on the part of the High Court Division”, an Appellate Division bench in its full judgment said on March 18.