A group of lawyers allegedly threw eggs at Justice Md Ashraful Kamal at the High Court on Wednesday.
The incident took place during a session at the bench of Justice Md Ashraful Kamal and Justice Kazi Waliul Islam.
The lawyers also forced the HC judge to leave the courtroom while conducting judicial functions, for allegedly making ‘adverse comments about late president Ziaur Rahman in a verdict’.
The HC bench was hearing and disposing of cases in courtroom No. 32 at Bipoy 71 High Court building on the Supreme Court premises after lunch hours.
Around 2:30pm, a group of lawyers entered the courtroom and told Justice Md Ashraful Kamal that he (Justice Ashraful) has no right to hold the office of a judge anymore as he made adverse comments about the BNP founder in a judgement.
An official on duty at the HC bench said that the lawyers also told the justice that they had tolerated him for several years.
At one stage, a few of those lawyers threw eggs at him, however, the eggs missed the target and hit the calendar hung on a piece of wooden furniture in the courtroom.
Both the judges of the HC bench then left the courtroom without saying anything to the protesting lawyers.
Justice Md Ashraful Kamal was appointed as an additional judge of the High Court on December 12 in 2010 for two years and his service was confirmed on December 10 in 2012 during the regime of Sheikh Hasina-led government.
After Wednesday’s incident, the judges of the High Court did not take part in courtroom proceedings.
Advocate Mohammad Mahbubur Rahman Khan, a pro-BNP lawyer and former vice president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, told media that Justice Md Ashraful Kamal has made adverse comments about later president Ziaur Rahman in a verdict in the ‘Asaduzzaman Vs Bangladesh’ case in 2016 while he was a junior judge of an HC bench.
In the verdict, Justice Ashraful Kamal observed that Ziaur Rahman was not only the collaborators of the killers of the father of the nation and his family and the killers of the four national leaders. Rather, he (Ziaur Rahman) rewarded the murderers of the father of the nation and his family by making them ambassadors, parliamentarians, etc.
“What he (Ziaur Rahman) did more heinously is that he formulated the Indemnity Act, stopping the trial of the murderers of the people's elected president, the Father of the Nation and his family.”
“(Ziaur Rahman) completely illegally and unconstitutionally seized the office of President, which can be said in a word, seized the people's institutions at gunpoint”, Justice Ashraful said in the verdict.
Advocate Mahbubur Rahman Khan, also the publicity secretary of Bangladesh Jatiyatabadi Ainjibi Forum, further said that some general lawyers also confined High Court Division's Registrar Munshi Moshiur Rahman at his office for some time this afternoon and removed his nameplate from his office as he was one of the behind-the-scenes craftsmen of the attempted judicial coup on August 10 and a friend of the fascist government.
Munshi Moshiar Rahman forced many lower court judges to go to Tungipara in Gopalganj while he was a judge in Narayanganj district, said the lawyer.
In line with demands from certain quarters, twelve HC judges have been kept away from judicial proceedings from October 20.
Earlier on August 10, the then chief justice Obaidul Hassan and five other judges of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court stepped down amid students' demonstrations demanding their resignations following the fall of Sheikh Hasina-led government on August 5
