In our society we have always held judges in highest esteem. They received utmost reverence and admiration, not only from the common people, even from respectable people of other equally exalted professions. Judges, by virtue of their honesty, uprightness, wisdom and neutrality, created an aura of holiness around them that stayed until they retired from the service. Even in retirement they carried the myth with them.

The reasons being, judges used to come from the best stock of learned people having the required academic background and experience and all other mandated qualities to sit on the chair as deliverer of justice, with malice or prejudice or favour to none, upholding the truth, the only truth, and nothing but the truth. And after the Providence, judges are the ones who are legally empowered to decide the fate of a man -- whether he would live or die.

In Bangladesh, judges and common people or people of other professions have always maintained a respectable distance from one another lest familiarity worked as a deterrent in executing their verdicts. A judge was not to be seen merrymaking in public. A judge was not supposed to walk the path of the commoners. A judge was to stay one rung above others in the social ladder. A judge was to be the last refuge of a helpless person. A judge was a custodian of the constitution.

But when judges waver; when judges are indecisive; when judges are irresolute; when judges falter and when judges become partisan -- politically or otherwise -- they begin to slide downward from the high moral ground and begin to lose their respectability in society. If this happens to a judge then that would be considered only one step short of a sad demise of the iconic aura he once enjoyed.

And that is what we have been witnessing in Bangladesh in recent days. Yes, it is with a heavy heart and bewilderment that we note that in Bangladesh some judges are out to do great injustice to their exalted profession by unnecessarily getting mired in controversial political issues when they were expected to remain above such commonplace affairs.

Politics has become the profession of the thugs in this country. So, why should some judges with good track record get involved in this? What has gotten into them? Do politicians enjoy more power and respect than the judges do? Surely they do not. Then why become their agents and offer your office to let them manipulate the legal proceedings and thereby destroy the image of the sacred precinct of law? Isn't it like throttling your throat with your own hands? It is bizarre indeed that some judges are violating codes of conduct one after another with impunity, and we have to watch such ludicrous moral plunge on our TV sets on a daily basis.

It gave us much pain to see the entire nation mocking at a once respectable judge when he began to toy with people's right to vote and be enlisted as a genuine voter. This particular judge has no record of personal dishonesty and he had entered the last part of an illustrious career. Then something got into his head and he injudiciously walked into a vicious trap that was cleverly set for him by the vested quarters. From then on, this respectable judge began to act like a man possessed. He not only discarded a valuable data base of voters, he began to create a new voter list despite a High Court ruling that prevented him from throwing away the existing voter list. He was to upgrade it only by including the genuine names of the new voters.

His work was stopped when the Supreme Court upheld the HC ruling. But as this particular judge went on with the work of upgrading the voter list, he eventually ended up including names of more than one crore new voters. Even though the entire nation questioned the authenticity of such result, he opted to remain tight lipped. Then began a hide and seek game with the people and media. By his acts, the judge went against the will of the people; went against the dictates of the constitution and he obstructed the people from having information, thereby violating their basic right. Is this expected of a judge?

But it was nothing when compared with what the chief justice did the other day. He has done something in his own domain that will go down as the darkest period in the annals of justice in Bangladesh. By his acts, the chief justice has exposed his leaning towards one side, which is most unbecoming of a person sitting on that exalted chair.

Our question is: Had the verdict gone against the chief adviser of the caretaker government would that have affected him or the legal system of the land in any way? Then why did he do that? Is he empowered to protect any person from trial before the hearing of the case has been completed? Didn't the nation expect him, and most rightly so, to be neutral as a judge? Has he lived up to his oath?

Be it fish or tree or human, once the rot spreads to the head, the chances of survival become nil. When the office of the chief justice becomes partisan, can we expect unadulterated justice? A million-dollar question, again.

Shahnoor Wahid is a Senior Assistant Editor of The Daily Star.