Staff Reporter :
A writ petition was filed on Sunday with the High Court seeking its directives upon the respondents to constitute an ‘Independent Police Complaint Investigation Commission’ to probe into the allegations against the members of the law enforcing agencies including the police for reportedly committing crimes.
A total of 102 Supreme Court lawyers collectively filed the writ petition with the HC, said advocate Mohammad Shishir Manir, a counsel for the petitioner.
The petition has already been placed in the HC bench of Justice Md Mozibur Rahman Miah and Justice Md Kamrul Hossain Mollah for hearing.
The writ petition sought an ad interim direction from the High Court to form a committee comprising retired judge, former inspector general of police, retired secretary, law teacher and civil society representative.
It also sought direction so that the committee could discuss and review the relevant issues and submit their views in the form of a report directly to the court.
Earlier on September 10 in 2020 a legal notice was also issued upon the government bodies requesting them to constitute an ‘Independent Police Complaint Investigation Commission’ to investigate the crime charges of the law enforcers.
But the respondents didn’t comply with the legal notice yet. Then the lawyers filed the writ petition.
Secretaries of the home ministry, law ministry and inspector general of police have been made respondents in the petition.
The lawyers submitted the 145-page petition annexing the 1522 pages of documents as a public interest litigation saying that a section of law enforcers are reportedly involved in 18 types of crimes, including extrajudicial killing, rape, stalking, drug trading, torture, causing custodial deaths and enforced disappearances.
In the petition the lawyers mentioned around 589 incidents of such offences those had been taken place in between January 2017 to July 2020.
They also stated that since law enforcers conducted their own inquiries into the allegations against them, the probes are not done fairly and neutrally.
There are independent commissions in different countries including the USA, the UK, France, India and Pakistan to conduct investigations into the allegations against law enforcers, the SC lawyers also said in their petition. Section 71 of the proposed Police Ordinance-2007 provides for the formation of a ‘Police Complaints Commission’, according to the writ petition. But the government has not implemented it till today.
