Writ challenges ACC’s power to lodge, investigate corruption cases

Two Supreme Court lawyers on Sunday filed a writ petition with the High Court questioning the Anti-Corruption Commission's ability to lodge corruption cases and investigate them. 

The petitioners are supreme court lawyers Advocate Subir Nandi Das and Barrister Nowshin Nawal. Advocate Abdul Kaiyum and Momtaz Parvin filed the writ petition on behalf of them.

They have requested the court to issue a rule asking why rule number 1(2)(DD)(G), 4, 9(A), 10 of Anti-Corruption Commission Rules-2007 (Amendment 2019) and form-2B should not be declared illegal. 

The defendants in the writ petition are – the secretaries of Law Secretariat, Home Secretariat and Parliament Secretariat, ACC chairman, Inspector General of Police and ACC secretary. 

Advocate Subir Nandi Das told media, these ACC rules go against article 31, 65(A) of the constitution and section 154 of the code of criminal procedure. 

The writ petitioners say police are bound to record anyone's complaint according to section 154 of the code of criminal procedure. But because of the ACC rule, police stations can no longer file cases on corruption charges directly. 

When someone goes to police to complain about corruption, they can only file general diaries. Then the police send the general diaries to ACC, which conducts an investigation and files a case based on that, says the petition. 

The writ petitioners claimed that this ACC rule restrains people's ability to file cases on corruption with the police stations directly.

However, ACC issued a gazette amending the Anti-Corruption Commission Rules-2007 on June 20 this year, in which they have mentioned their ability of filing cases. 

According to Rule 4 of the amendment, a citizen should be able to file complaints to the police stations. They will be recorded as general diaries by the police and later sent to ACC. Rule 10 provides ACC with the power to investigate the allegations.