HC questions judicial activity of UNOs

The High Court Wednesday questioned the legality of a Upazila Nirbahi Officer's authority when giving decisions as the judicial magistrates. The court asked to know as to why two such decisions of the UNO of Batiaghata in Khulna would not be declared beyond jurisdiction and thus scrapped. It also summoned all dockets of such decisions within two weeks. The bench of Justice Quazi Reza-Ul Hoque and Justice Mohammad Ullah passed the rule after primary hearing on two writ petitions. The public administration secretary, Khulna's DC, SP, UNO of Batiaghata, and the OC are among the respondents who have been asked to come up with their explanations. Lawyer for the petitioners, ABM Altaf Hossain, said that the UNO, Billal Hossain Khan, issued two summons for receiving two complainants and took them as cases. He even heard deposition of the plaintiff. The UNO, after the hearing, asked the OC to file the case for one complaint, and, for the other, he asked the OC to consider the complaint as the case statement. “These are the jurisdictions of a judicial magistrate, not a UNO who is an executive official. He exercised judicial power illegally. We have told the court that the incident is an assault on the judiciary,” the lawyer told the Dhaka Tribune. He said that an executive magistrate can only conduct the mobile courts, not a judicial court. Of the two incidents, one complaint was raised by a local businessman over land dispute, and the other from an employee of the UNO office over an alleged assault on him last year.