Beyond the separation of the judiciary
Thursday, 22 November 2007
Mozzamel Haque
Hundreds of thousands of cases have been pending with the lower courts of Bangladesh for years. The slow process of giving final judgement on a case, a matching lengthy process adopted for revision or appeal, etc., mean that sometimes the judgements lose their significance when the same are delivered. The sheer costs of bearing with such a long litigation process are also a serious matter in most cases for the plaintiffs and the defendants. A bill was supposed to be piloted in the last parliament which was designed to speed up the functioning of the courts in general. But it has not been heard of ever since the news of its preparation. A report in this paper quoted sometime ago the Chief Justice as suggesting that lawyers should spend more time in the courts to ease the backlog of cases. While there is merit in this suggestion, it should be obvious to all stakeholders that faster settlement of cases calls for capacity building and systemic changes in the judiciary itself. Reforms need to be especially carried out in different tiers of the judicial system to this end.
The country's legal system is burdened by outdated laws, insufficient number of judges and support staff at different levels, corruption within the courts and poor ways of keeping and retrieving records in the court houses that only aid corrupt activities. A foreign funded programme to upgrade the judiciary in these respects appears not to have made much headway.
The grave lapses in the legal system were revealed last year at a roundtable discussion where it was disclosed that 1,028 people in the country had been languishing in jail without trial for two years. This was a blunt admission of the facts as to how severely human rights can be violated in a place like Bangladesh where the poor are especially and extremely vulnerable to such violation of their basic rights due to their poverty and hence inability to access the judicial system.
It is very likely that these people are mainly from poor sections of society who are either not knowledgeable about their human rights or do not have the financial strength to appoint lawyers to move for their release or bail in the interim period till their cases come to courts. Ordinarily, the state should have conducted judicial proceedings against them or even provided legal assistance to them free of charge to complete the cases against them to keep in jail only those who would be legally convicted. The lack of adjudication could be due to various reasons: dithering over submitting police charge-sheets after proper investigation, the overburdened courts with too many cases and, therefore, insufficient legal capacities to try the above cases in time. But whatever the reasons, these unfortunate persons were made to suffer internment and all the sufferings thereof, without a legal basis for the same. Government has been provisioning a legal aid system for the poor to access justice. But it has very limited availability and application which means that poor people generally continue to be very frustrated in having proper access to the legal system.
The interim government has created high expectations by addressing many issues of great significance for Bangladesh and its people. It is, therefore, also expected to turn its attention to the very pressing need of carrying out sweeping and effective reforms in the legal spheres.
Hundreds of thousands of cases have been pending with the lower courts of Bangladesh for years. The slow process of giving final judgement on a case, a matching lengthy process adopted for revision or appeal, etc., mean that sometimes the judgements lose their significance when the same are delivered. The sheer costs of bearing with such a long litigation process are also a serious matter in most cases for the plaintiffs and the defendants. A bill was supposed to be piloted in the last parliament which was designed to speed up the functioning of the courts in general. But it has not been heard of ever since the news of its preparation. A report in this paper quoted sometime ago the Chief Justice as suggesting that lawyers should spend more time in the courts to ease the backlog of cases. While there is merit in this suggestion, it should be obvious to all stakeholders that faster settlement of cases calls for capacity building and systemic changes in the judiciary itself. Reforms need to be especially carried out in different tiers of the judicial system to this end.
The country's legal system is burdened by outdated laws, insufficient number of judges and support staff at different levels, corruption within the courts and poor ways of keeping and retrieving records in the court houses that only aid corrupt activities. A foreign funded programme to upgrade the judiciary in these respects appears not to have made much headway.
The grave lapses in the legal system were revealed last year at a roundtable discussion where it was disclosed that 1,028 people in the country had been languishing in jail without trial for two years. This was a blunt admission of the facts as to how severely human rights can be violated in a place like Bangladesh where the poor are especially and extremely vulnerable to such violation of their basic rights due to their poverty and hence inability to access the judicial system.
It is very likely that these people are mainly from poor sections of society who are either not knowledgeable about their human rights or do not have the financial strength to appoint lawyers to move for their release or bail in the interim period till their cases come to courts. Ordinarily, the state should have conducted judicial proceedings against them or even provided legal assistance to them free of charge to complete the cases against them to keep in jail only those who would be legally convicted. The lack of adjudication could be due to various reasons: dithering over submitting police charge-sheets after proper investigation, the overburdened courts with too many cases and, therefore, insufficient legal capacities to try the above cases in time. But whatever the reasons, these unfortunate persons were made to suffer internment and all the sufferings thereof, without a legal basis for the same. Government has been provisioning a legal aid system for the poor to access justice. But it has very limited availability and application which means that poor people generally continue to be very frustrated in having proper access to the legal system.
The interim government has created high expectations by addressing many issues of great significance for Bangladesh and its people. It is, therefore, also expected to turn its attention to the very pressing need of carrying out sweeping and effective reforms in the legal spheres.