Justice seekers in lower courts have to bear additional costs of cases at every stage. After filing a case with a police station, the case statement is sent to the court. When an accused is arrested in a case, he is produced in the court with the police report. Then a legal battle starts. From this point, a justice-seeker has to pay money at every stage of proceedings.
Proceeding of a case continues for years. Basically, appearing in the court, signing powers of attorney, receiving bail order, bringing the case in the cause-list, forwarding the hearing serial, holding bail hearings and receiving the bail order copy do not work without extra expense.
The payment sometimes exceeds Tk 200.00 for each work. As a result, the justice-seeking people coming to the lower courts are being subjected to harassment and sufferings almost at every step.
The justice-seeking people have been stuck in the unholy trade of a syndicate for years. Services do not match without this. Even the case files don’t move without it. As a result, many people have been forced to count a lot of money. This system is impoverishing the justice-seeking people. Many of the justice-seeking people are selling their land properties to meet the costs of cases.
A group of court-centric professionals is flourishing with money even though the justice-seeking people are getting poorer. Many of them are making luxurious buildings. A section of lawyers are also involved in this transaction. They collect this money through their assistants.
Hardly any initiative has been taken to curb the court-centric payment system. Even there is no surveillance in this regard. These trades are happening in front of everyone concerned.
During a recent visit it was found that the case filing branch, the record keeping section, the general register branch, assistants of judges, GRO of the case, computer operator, messengers of judges, court peon, summons issuer, IT section and dispatch section are involved in irregularities in the lower courts. Most of the employees of these sections are involved in such irregularities.
However, none of the court lawyers, lawyer-assistants, peons, clerks and police calls the expenditure ‘bribe’. They term it as ‘bakshis’, which is paid to finish the work without any hindrance.
A justice-seeking person have to pay Tk 100 to 200 to a court peon or others for getting bail hearing put up. Apart from this, one has to pay Tk 1000 to 2000 to the general register section of police for checking the bail order before sending it to the jail. One has to pay more than Tk 2000 for sending the release order speedily to the jail.
After getting bail from the court an accused has to appear in the court once or twice in a month and he has to pay Tk 100 to 200 to the police member of the GR section on every appearing date.
Public Prosecutor (PP) of the Dhaka Metropolitan Sessions Judge’s Court Abdullah Abu said, “Many justice-seeking people give money to the police members, court peons, record keepers, and summon issuers. This is an open matter. Many officials reportedly clog up the case files when the litigants are unable to pay. This is absolutely pitiable.”
The litigants, however, can lodge complaints with the competent authorities through their lawyers. Complaining is punishing. There is no remedy, why should there be? When corruption systematic and essential for political survival.
