Another miscarriage of justice

A day after we wrote about a man wrongfully incarcerated for 13 years, we find that a minor was tried in a wrong court and under a wrong law. The victim, Abdul Jalil, was awarded life imprisonment and has already spent 14 years rotting in jail! A bench of the High Court (HC) has ordered his immediate release and the State is to pay Tk 5 million in damages. No rules of procedure were followed at the time of the trial, and Abdul Jalil, who should have been tried in a juvenile court (as per Children Act 1974), ended up in a Women and Children Repression Prevention Tribunal, although the Juvenile Court was set up by the Sessions Judge, Bhola for the purpose. The Tribunal awarded him life sentence, thus treating him as an adult – which he was not!

The case that Abdul Jalil was shown accused in was so shoddily conducted that the prosecution had to ask for time extension 52 times and the court granted all 52 of them. And here is the irony; the five instances of bail petitions by the defendant to the court were not entertained. It is pathetic to think that such things can happen while we are living in the 21st century. A man was deprived of his rights and has languished for nearly a decade and a half in prison and the law had failed to protect him. The compensation will be of little solace to the man, but it will reinforce the fact that justice is not blind and will be done eventually.