The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court has ordered BNP acting secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir to submit the explanation on his recent comment on the judiciary as an affidavit on Tuesday.
A five-member bench headed by Chief Justice SK Sinha passed the order on Monday, rejecting the plea to submit the explanation by Fakhrul's lawyer.
Mirza Fakhrul, during a meeting of BNP’s Sylhet unit on February 7, said the government was trying to control the judiciary. He claimed that there was no democracy in the country, nor an independent judiciary.
He further said murder, enforced disappearance and abduction had been on sharp rise since the government took the office by force. The court fixed February 22 for the submission of the written explanation.
The apex court did not hear Fakhrul's leave-to-appeal petition against the High Court ruling on his bail plea on Monday.
The High Court on November 24 granted three months’ bail to Mirza Fakhrul in three cases of violence, filed on January 4, 5 and 6 last year, accusing him and several other party leaders and activists of vandalising and torching vehicles in the capital.
Fakhrul then filed the leave-to-appeal petition with the chamber judge of the Supreme Court, who forwarded the petition to a regular appeals bench for hearing.
