Staff Reporter :
The High Court in a verdict said that the mobile courts have not any jurisdiction to conduct trial of the children’s cases.
The court said, “We have not found anything in the Mobile Court Act, 2009 which has empowered the executive magistrates to hold trial of a child accused. Rather, the Children Act, 2013, being the subsequent special law, the provisions of the same will override in case of any conflict of it with the Mobile Court Act, 2009.”
“Therefore, when the said Children Act, 2013 has provided special procedure for dealing with and trial of the children under the age of 18, Mobile Court Act cannot confer jurisdiction on the executive magistrates even to deal with the said children, not to speak of conducting their trial,” also read the verdict.
Following a news report the HC Bench of Justice Sheikh Hassan Arif and Justice Md Mahmud Hassan Talukder issued a rule on a Suo moto (voluntary) move on October 31 last year and after hearing on the rule the Bench delivered the verdict on March 11 this year.
The full text of the verdict was released on Wednesday night on the Supreme Court website after judges of the HC Bench signed it.
In an observation the court said, “Some people in our country praise this sort of so-called instant justice system. Do they not think that these children also have fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution to have public trial, to engage lawyers of their choice, right to be treated in accordance with law and only in accordance with law?” The court also declared actions of executive magistrate-run mobile courts convicting 121 children and sentencing them to imprisonment for different tenures on criminal charges ‘illegal and unconstitutional’. It directed authorities concerned of the government to immediately release children convicted and sentenced by mobile courts, if there is any in custody.
“The children in question shall not bear any consequences, legal or factual, of such conviction and sentence in their future life. There shall not be any criminal record against the said children in so far as the said cases are concerned,” the HC Bench observed.
According to the report, mobile courts of RAB had jailed 121 children to six months to one year from May 3 to August 10 last year and they had been kept in the Children Development Centres in Jashore and Tongi.
Barrister Md Abdul Halim and Advocate Ishrat Hasan placed the newspaper report before the High Court Bench for necessary orders.
