Justice delayed is justice denied
Saturday, 3 November 2007
Nasim Ahmed
MANY litigants find no use for the delayed judgements coming as they do with hundreds of thousands of cases remaining pending in the lower courts for years. Completion of the appeal process similarly requires another long and indefinite waiting.
The sheer cost of such lengthy litigation process makes plaintiffs and the defendants equally weary. A bill, designed to speed up the functioning of the courts has not been heard of since it was prepared to be piloted in parliament. The Chief Justice recently suggested 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 would require capacity building and systemic reforms in different tiers of the judiciary. This operational aspect of the judiciary merits now a serious attention in view of the separation of judiciary now from the executive.
Outdated laws, insufficient number of judges and support staff at different levels and poor record keeping and retrieving explain the problem with the judiciary. A foreign funded programme to upgrade the system appears to have produced little results.
The nation came to know from a recent roundtable discussion that 1,028 people in the country had been in jail without trial for two years. This was explains for itself the state of human rights violation in the country with the poor remaining vulnerable to such violation of basic rights due to their inability to access justice.
It is quite likely that these people mainly from poor sections of society, are either not aware of their human rights or do not have the money to appoint lawyers to move for bail awaiting disposal of their cases. The state should have tried them by providing legal assistance, free of charge, to the poor to complete the cases against them to keep jail space available for the convicts and others, who really need to be put up there.
The lack of adjudication could be due to dithering in proper investigation and submission of charge-sheets by the police, and too many cases making the legal system insufficient for trying the cases in time. Whatever the causes, these unfortunate persons were made to suffer confinement and all that go with it, and many possibly without a valid ground.
The government has been provisioning a legal aid system for the poor to access justice. But due to its limited availability and the resourceless, the poor are very frustrated and find it difficult to access the legal system and continue to suffer.
The interim government has raised expectations on many issues of significance including on effective reforms of the judiciary and legal system. It should take early actions to meet such expectations.
MANY litigants find no use for the delayed judgements coming as they do with hundreds of thousands of cases remaining pending in the lower courts for years. Completion of the appeal process similarly requires another long and indefinite waiting.
The sheer cost of such lengthy litigation process makes plaintiffs and the defendants equally weary. A bill, designed to speed up the functioning of the courts has not been heard of since it was prepared to be piloted in parliament. The Chief Justice recently suggested 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 would require capacity building and systemic reforms in different tiers of the judiciary. This operational aspect of the judiciary merits now a serious attention in view of the separation of judiciary now from the executive.
Outdated laws, insufficient number of judges and support staff at different levels and poor record keeping and retrieving explain the problem with the judiciary. A foreign funded programme to upgrade the system appears to have produced little results.
The nation came to know from a recent roundtable discussion that 1,028 people in the country had been in jail without trial for two years. This was explains for itself the state of human rights violation in the country with the poor remaining vulnerable to such violation of basic rights due to their inability to access justice.
It is quite likely that these people mainly from poor sections of society, are either not aware of their human rights or do not have the money to appoint lawyers to move for bail awaiting disposal of their cases. The state should have tried them by providing legal assistance, free of charge, to the poor to complete the cases against them to keep jail space available for the convicts and others, who really need to be put up there.
The lack of adjudication could be due to dithering in proper investigation and submission of charge-sheets by the police, and too many cases making the legal system insufficient for trying the cases in time. Whatever the causes, these unfortunate persons were made to suffer confinement and all that go with it, and many possibly without a valid ground.
The government has been provisioning a legal aid system for the poor to access justice. But due to its limited availability and the resourceless, the poor are very frustrated and find it difficult to access the legal system and continue to suffer.
The interim government has raised expectations on many issues of significance including on effective reforms of the judiciary and legal system. It should take early actions to meet such expectations.