The arrival at the High Court premises of some Special Branch officials and their insistence on meeting Justice Khairul Huq, one of the two judges who declared the 5th amendment to the Constitution illegal, in the midst of a hearing they were holding, would have been an outrage by itself. What is even worse was that they pressed for having a word with Justice Huq in spite of attempts at dissuasion, and in fact had their way as the judge came down from the bench to move to his retiring room for a short while and talk.

The sequence of indiscretions ran like this: first, the SB men announce their presence in the court; secondly, they virtually seek the precedence of their errands over the court in session; and obviously it escapes them that, all of this being set against the backdrop of the HC verdict on fifth amendment, could be deemed to be intimidating.

If they had anything to say, it could be conveyed to persons concerned through other methods, especially when they were ostensibly offering security to them presumably in consequence of a decision at a higher level of the government. Why those people had to upset the proceedings of a court even for a short while when the message they spelt out could be communicated to the Registrar in an unobtrusive manner?

We urge the government to go into the matter and take whatever action would be appropriate in accord with the high place judiciary has in a democracy.