'Punishment to transport owners too for accidents'

FE Report

Communications Minister Syed Abul Hossain has said the government will include a provision of punishment to the transport owners in the Motor Vehicles Act, which is now under revision, in view of their responsibility in connection with road accidents.

"The drivers are certainly responsible for road accidents but the owners may project such unwanted situations to make them conscious about the value of lives," the minister told reporters Thursday after he visited Mirsarai of Chittagong district to express sympathy to the families of the schoolboys who died in a truck accident last Monday.

Some 39 students of a Mirsarai school met their end of lives when a truck carrying them home from a football match skidded off the road into a canal.

The incident cast a spell of grief over the entire nation. The educational institutions across the country observed a day mourning Wednesday wearing black badges. Most of the envoys of foreign missions also expressed their condolences over the accident.

During his visit to the spot of the accident the minister admitted that the driver was mainly responsible for the worst-ever such accident. He however said the elderly people who arranged the boys' return from the place in a truck also had some responsibility.

The minister visited some houses of the victims' families and declared providing Tk 25,000 for each family of the deceased and Tk 10,000 each for those who were injured.

He also offered education free of cost for other children of these families in his constituency up to high level.

Secretary of newly set-up Railway Division and chairman of Bangladesh Road Transport Corporation accompanied the minister during the visit.

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SCBA says mobile court punishment unlawful

Dhaka, June 20 (bdnews24.com)?The president of the opposition-controlled Bangladesh Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) has said executive magistrates punishing opposition supporters in political programmes through mobile courts is unlawful.

Khandaker Mahbub Hossain, a pro-BNP lawyer, on Monday at a press briefing said that such move was a threat to the independence of judiciary.

Magistrates before and during the BNP shutdown on June 12 and 13 summarily sentenced over 100 opposition supporters to jail and penalised many others.

BNP acting secretary-general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir on the second day of the 36-hour countrywide lockdown vowed to challenge such mobile courts in court. He also expressed the party's stand to face the issue politically.

He alleged the punishments were given under the tobacco and anti-drug law of 1952.

Two executive magistrates on that day claimed that they were handing down punishments under sections 353 and 186 of the 2009 Bangladesh Penal Code for mobile courts. The sections provide for action against obstruction in government duty.

Home minister Shahara Khatun the same day said legal action had been taken against those creating anarchy.

"Mobile courts are working in line with the law, even the ministers don't have the right to speak about or against the court."

Human-rights organisation Ain o Salish Kendra expressed concern over the operations of such mobile courts, saying those might affect general people like in the past.

bdnews24.com/sn/pks/bd/1648h

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