Bail seekers face hurdles to enlist cases for hearing
Lawyers for detained people are facing hurdles trying to enlist their cases for hearing by online courts as only a few judges were assigned to hear urgent bail applications.
Lawyers said that bail applications were piling up as the applicants were kept waiting for about two weeks or more to enlist their cases for hearing online because there is a less number of online courts than necessary and the limited time allocated for court procedures.
They said that regular courts used to be a daylong affair but the online courts functioned only for two hours.
High Court registrar Md Golam Rabbani told New Age on Saturday that the online High Court bench of Justice Mustafa Zaman Islam stopped receiving new bail applications from June 24.
The applicants would have to wait until the court disposes of 850 applications which were emailed since June 16.
The court officials said that Justice Mustafa Zaman Islam granted bails to over 200 detained people after hearing 400 applications in eight days.
Lawyer Shishir Manir said that he tried for 10 days to email the bail application of his client Salauddin from Chapainawabganj to the online bench of Justice Jahangir Hossain on Thursday but it could not be delivered because the court’s email reached its maximum storage.
Deputy attorney general Bashir Ullah said that the bench’s email was overloaded with more than 1,000 bail applications.
He said that the court resumed taking online applications from Thursday after stopping receiving new applications for several weeks.
Litigants said that lawyers forced them to pay excessive fees as the online court case conducting cost became higher than that of the regular courts.
Several lawyers told New Age that they bribed court officials at a higher rate to enlist their bail applications for hearing to type bail orders and serve the orders to the lower courts or the jails.
They said that court officials forced them to pay bribe taking advantage of the COVID 19 emergency as they were fully dependent on the officials to know the fate of their emailed applications.
Though the applications were emailed and they were heard online, lawyers or their clients required to visit the courtrooms physically to know the update of the cases and to enlist them for hearing as serials were constantly being manipulated.
Supreme Court lawyer Sagir Hossain Leon demanded that the number of online courts be increased from four to eight to tackle the backlog of bail applications.
He also demanded ensuring filing of all cases through the ‘mycourt apps’ to stop corruption of the bench officers and maintain serial of the cases for hearing.
Dhaka court lawyer Homaun Babur Firoz said that he sent several days to enlist his client’s Digital Security Act case for hearing before the district and sessions judge court.
High Court registrar Golam Rabbani said that the Supreme Court introduced the system of filing applications through ‘mycourt apps’ to stop long-running corruption involving the bench officers.
‘But the mycourt system could not be enforced due to corrupt officials,’ he said.
He said that a total of 44,802 detained persons were granted bail by the online courts of the subordinate courts in 30 working days since its inception on May 11.
A total of 72,515 prisoners were in the country’s 68 jails until June 15, said an official of the directorate of prisons.
News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net
