Courtroom Shortage Must Not Delay Justice

That over one lakh cases sit trapped in judicial limbo across Dhaka’s district courts is both deeply concerning and fundamentally unacceptable. According to a report published in this newspaper on Monday, the High Court monitoring committee inspected the Dhaka court premises recently, and while visiting, it found the immediate physical bottleneck was impossible to miss: judges are taking turns to share physical courtrooms. Justice JBM Hassan thus rightly directed authorities to end this courtroom sharing arrangement and find immediate ways to speed up case disposal. Yet, while a genuine shortage of space exists, brick and mortar limitations must never serve as a comfortable excuse for delaying justice.

Against this backdrop, the daily chaos inside these shared halls is easy to grasp. Hearing schedules become difficult to maintain, lawyers waste precious hours waiting in packed corridors, and court clerks struggle under mounting pressure to manage dockets. Expanding the existing eight storey building to ten storeys may offer temporary breathing room; meanwhile, the authorities must recognise that physical expansion alone cannot mend a stalled administrative framework. Concurrently, sweeping procedural reforms must move hand in hand with structural projects. Moreover, simply doubling room capacity without modernising how cases are assigned, tracked and managed will only mean larger spaces accumulating the exact same old backlog.

More importantly, behind every file gathering dust on a shelf, there is a real person paying a heavy price for lost time. For a typical litigant travelling into Dhaka from a remote village, an unannounced adjournment is never a minor inconvenience. It means lost daily wages, extra travel costs, attorney fees and compounding psychological anxiety. Nevertheless, victims and witnesses wait years for basic proceedings to advance, while accused persons in custody may face prolonged uncertainty. Even so, these structural delays inflict severe financial and emotional injury on vulnerable families, quietly chipping away at public trust in the legal system as a whole.

Therefore, the Ministry of Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs alongside the Supreme Court administration must translate vocal concern into decisive action. Securing clear funding and strict timelines for structural expansion is vital; also, fixing internal operational bottlenecks matters just as much. Enforcing strict hearing calendars, ensuring prompt police investigation reports, and modernising summons deliveries could help prevent avoidable adjournments.

We must remember that Dhaka’s courtroom shortage explains part of the judicial pressure, but it cannot justify endless gridlock. Ultimately, true judicial reform is measured by timely case disposal and fair verdicts, not simply by the number of courtrooms constructed. Citizens turn to the bench to protect their fundamental rights, and they deserve a system that values their dignity and respects their time.