The Supreme Court Chief Justice of Bangladesh, Obaidul Hassan, will step down this week after student protests at the Dhaka campus. On Saturday alone, students, and mainly lawyers, marched into the court with their Bangladeshi counterparts, taking over the courts and giving out an ultimatum of 1 PM local time for Hassan and other judges in the Appellate Division to resign or be fired. Lack of the same saw the protesters promise to surround the judges’ homes and possibly impeach them.
After enduring immense pressure, Hassan, M. Prasanna, and Asif resigned from the party. Hassan, about to address this matter, said that he would resign after the meeting with President Mohammed Shahabuddin later in the evening. The statement was made at a time when tensions were increasing earlier in the day, and people protested and demanded the resignation of the head of the judiciary.
The protests emerged at about 10:30 AM when protesters started flocking the Supreme Court compound. Their complaints were aggravated when Asif Mahmud, an adviser to the Youth and Sports Ministry of the Interim government, posted something on Facebook. The post called for Hassan’s resignation and the stoppage of a plenary session to decide whether official court activities were to be conducted online. Due to the protests, Hassan put the full court meeting on hold.
Obaidul Hassan, who became the country’s Chief Justice last year, has been influenced by the banners of the dismissed Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Hasina, who recently escaped to neighbouring India in a helicopter, has been accused as well as criticized for the human rights abuses during the regime. This enabled her government to be charged with many human rights abuses, such as political opponents’ executions without trial. This sudden twist proves the political transformation in Bangladesh, which suffers from a change in the judiciary and political framework.
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