Shahudul Haque

Huda served in the Pakistan Army during the Bangladesh Liberation War.^[2] He was one of 17 former Army officers recruited into Bangladesh Police by President Ziaur Rahman.^[2]

In August 2003, AHM Shamsuddin Chowdhury Manik, an additional judge of the High Court, issued a notice of query on the then IGP Haque while drawing contempt proceedings against five police personnel.^[3] According to Manik, a traffic policeman on duty did not salute, while his car passed in the Farmgate area in Dhaka earlier in June the same year.^[3] Haque, in his clarification letter, mentioned that "a traffic policeman on duty is not obliged to salute anybody but a discretion is left to him to pay compliment to anybody without risking traffic accident. The duty of a driver is to obey the direction of the traffic policeman and he has no right to conduct a research as to whether the direction given by the traffic policeman is right or wrong".^[3] This response triggered the High Court to put contempt charge against Haque himself.^[3] In January 2004, the High Court found Haque guilty of gross misconduct in the contempt case against the judge as well as the court and fined him Tk 2,000.^[4] Later on 8 December, he was convicted of contempt of court after the Supreme Court rejected his appeal petition against the conviction.^[5] According to the legal experts, Haque stood dismissed from service since the relevant law says, "a public servant loses job for committing offences punishable with death, transportation or imprisonment for a term exceeding six months or with fines exceeding Tk 1,000 or both."^[5][6][7][8] Government removed Haque from the IGP position on 14 December 2004 and put Ashraful Huda as the acting IGP.^[9][10] Two days later, the government appointed Huda as the new IGP and the President of Bangladesh pardoned Haque by exempting him from the purview of Section 3 of Public Servants (Dismissal on Conviction) Ordinance, 1985.^[11]

In April 2004, Haque's term for the IGP office was extended for one more year.^[12] During his term, the incident of 2004 Dhaka grenade attack occurred in August 2004 that killed 19 and injured over 200 others.^[13][14] In October, Haque mentioned that "no international link has been found to the recent spate of bomb blasts", a claim that contradicted the government's one-member judicial commission, which hinted at the link of a "foreign enemy" to the attack.^[15][16] In July 2011, 30 people were added to the supplementary charge sheets of the grenade attack case which included Haque's name.^[17] Later in December, Haque had appealed to a Dhaka court to discharge him from the cases but it was rejected.^[18][19] In March 2012, Haque was charged for assisting the killers financially and administratively to execute the attack and faced up to life-term imprisonment.^[20][21] He was granted bail the next month.^[22][23][24] In October 2018, Haque and another former IGP, Ashraful Huda, were sentenced to two years in jail and fined Tk 50,000 for harbouring the offenders.^[25]