The country’s judiciary is now facing a huge backlog of around 37 lakh cases in all types of courts across the country, causing immense suffering not only to the justice seekers but also to the courts since they can increase workloads and take up space and resources.
According to the Supreme Court case statistic report, the apex court was holding a total of 512,685 backlog cases — 489,068 under the High Court Division and 23,617 under the Appellate Division till December last year, while the subordinate courts and tribunals were holding the remaining 31,72,043 case backlogs.
Amid such a situation, only 13 per cent people are now getting judicial services from the courts. The case backlog could have been worse if the rest 87 per cent people thronged the courts for services, according to a report of Justice Audit Bangladesh.
Media report in a national daily on Tuesday said that a big number of 72,392 cases are now pending only in Dhaka Metropolitan and Session judges’ courts till September 30. In absence of witnesses many cases are pending for more than a decade.
The judicial system has been broken to deny the people justice. Our educated people are indifferent to organise the rule of law but remain ready to criticise one-sidedly the courts and judges. It is for denial of justice through backlog of cases.
Our intellectuals do not try to know how easy it is for the police to start cases. There is pressure from the government to start selectively political cases. The police know their power is abused by the government for political benefit, so they also take advantage of the situation to abuse their power of filing cases for the benefit of corruption.
Most courts are busy in dealing with bail matters. The courts have no time to dispose of the main cases. And under the present judicial system, the prosecution is not interested to complete investigation for trial of the cases. They do not want false case to be exposed publicly.
We do not want to hear pious blaming of the courts for backlog cases when not blaming politics of court cases.
Lower judiciary is completely under the Law Ministry. Not long ago a magistrate was called by the Appellate Division to explain rejection of bail most illegally when he had jurisdiction and the accused was on bail from higher court. He did so under the threat of the Law Ministry. May be he could not say that.
When lawyers, journalists and university professors can become party activists for undeserving gain it is not honesty to expect the government to free from corruption and there will be speedy justice for the people. Nothing will run to serve public interest if our educated people continue to be self-serving.
It is also an intellectual dishonesty to think that only the courts should be able to do justice. If the government acts justly and fairly there will not be so many injustices for helpless people to come to court for justice.
