Actress Pori Moni. COURTESY
A Dhaka court has granted interim bail to actress Shamsunnahar Smriti, better known by her screen name Pori Moni, saying the order will remain effective until the filing of charges in a drug-related case by police.
Pori Moni secured her bail on a Tk 20,000 bond, Additional Public Prosecutor Tapas Paul said after a hearing in a Dhaka court on Tuesday.
On Jun 13, the actress made news headlines when she accused businessman Nasir U Mahmood of attempting to rape her at a Boat Club in Dhaka.
The Rapid Action Battalion conducted a raid on Pori Moni's home in Banani on Aug 4. The elite police unit later detained her allegedly with bottles of liquor, Yaba pills and LSD blots. She was then taken into police custody.
Since then, law enforcers were granted three rounds of remand to interrogate the actress over the drugs case.
The battle to secure bail for Pori Moni was a prolonged one as the court turned down several bail petitions from her defence team, and she was sent to prison at one point when the remand term ran out.
During a court hearing on Aug 21, the actress confronted lawyers from her own team about the delays in obtaining bail.
“Ask for my bail! Don't you understand how much I suffer? What is going on with you? Why don’t you ask for bail?” she had said.
On Aug 22, when Pori Moni’s lawyers petitioned the Dhaka Metropolitan Sessions Judge’s Court for bail in a narcotics case, Judge KM Imrul Kayesh set Sept 13 for the hearing. Pori Moni’s lawyer Mojibur Rahman then filed a fresh petition the following day, requesting a hearing be scheduled sooner.
After receiving no response to the petition, he moved the High Court on the matter on Aug 25.
On Aug 26, a High Court bench stated that the lengthy delay in the hearing was tantamount to rejecting the bail petition.
Justice Mustafa Zaman even said at the time that the response to the bail petition had been issued in a break with the tradition of the trial court.
Finally, on Tuesday, the actress received bail from the Dhaka Metropolitan Judges’ Court until the chargesheet was submitted, freeing her from the legal quagmire.
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