The non-government organisation Odhikar withdrew its writ petition from the High Court before the final judgment on Wednesday.
The High Court bench of Justice Md Khasruzzaman and Justice Md Iqbal Kabir was supposed to give the final decision of the writ filed in 2019 on Wednesday. But before that, Odhikar’s lawyer Advocate Ruhul Amin Bhuiyan withdrew the petition. For that, the court gave the ‘discharged for non-prosecution’ verdict. The case is closed now.
Odhikar applied for extension of its registration to the NGO affairs bureau on 25 September 2014. The bureau sought some clarifications after getting some anomalies including in its audit report.
But it did not respond to the call. The bureau did not extend its registration.
But Odhikar continued its activities for four years without registration. Then in 2019, it filed a writ petition in the High Court to get the registration.
Earlier in 2013, Odhikar Secretary Adilur Rahman Khan was arrested in connection with publishing a report on casualties during a crackdown on a Hefajat-e-Islam rally on 5 May the same year.
However, it failed to provide the name and full address of the deceased to the government when asked to verify the information.
The NGO affairs bureau, earlier, this year cancelled the registration with the reasons - not providing information required for registration and non-payment of increased fees and VAT imposed under the new law, no response or explanation for objections to eight financial audit reports of foreign-funded projects, creating anti-state issues on its website (odhikar.org), and not responding appropriately to intelligence report on inconsistencies in financial transactions in three projects.