13% people prefer courts for justice: Audit

Poor quality of police investigation in the cases, too many adjournments, non-appearance of witnesses, poor performance of prosecution among other reasons are responsible for huge backlog of cases, says a report of National Justice Audit.

The other reasons include lack of number of judges, lack of coordination among different government departments, and a section of lawyers’ unwillingness to settle a case within shot time.

This information came up at the “National Justice Audit Bangladesh” report. The report was presented at the Bangabandhu International Conference Centre in Dhaka today.

The law ministry in association with GIZ, a German organisation working on international cooperation, UK Aid, and Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) carried out the audit claimed to be the first of its kind in the world.

The report was presented amid presence of chief judicial magistrates, district and session judges of different districts.

According to the justice audit, 67 percent people opined that they have faith on existing judicial system. But on the other hand, the report shows only 13 percent people prefer going to courts to get justice, and the rest, would rather have community leaders to solve their issues.

According to the report, in most cases it took two to five years to settle a case for which the people had to visit courts for 20 to 25 times.

It took more than Tk 25,000 to settle a case, said the audit report.