Our criminal machine remains mired in a sea of old, colonial-generation trapping. Bangladesh bears the legacy of a system of administration of justice from the British colonial rulers who regularly changed the Mughal machine of management of justice, which become more often than not based on Islamic ideals.
Colonial legacies consisting of Penal Code 1860, Police Act 1861, Evidence Act 1872, and Code of Criminal Procedure 1898, Jail Code are still under pressure in Bangladesh with best peripheral amendments. The ethos of constitutional law, the precedents of the Supreme Court, worldwide treaty duty, and enactment of unique laws also impact the administration of crook justice in Bangladesh.
Although the enactment of colonial law has been considered a prime achievement in aligning the then familiar criminal rules with not unusual regulation ideas, it has now grown to be essential to make foremost adjustments and additions within the criminal justice gadget.
It is frequently said that the modern law of Bangladesh remains in large part colonial in nature and spirit. According to Akbar Ali Khan, as a result of the introduction of the lawyer-centric adverse device, felony reforms added by the British in this region became out to be “isomorphic mimicry,” which apparently looked liked western counterpart, however, in fact, was a device of exploitation for the bad, marginal, dissidents, and disadvantaged companies.
The acutely opposed procedure, with the passive position of judges, advocacy of legal professionals, strict mode of law enforcement corporations, and the imposition of excessive imprisonment, changed into introduced by way of the British rulers. Shaheen Malik rightly discovered that the cause for punishment turned into actually recognized to be deterrence, and a new regulation-making method of the British colonial rulers become on the whole irrational, random, and erratic.
Though Bangladesh is heading in the direction of a few monetary accelerations in the course of its journey, it has nonetheless ended up hostage to many governance issues regarding yawning financial disparity and effectiveness of nation establishments.
All these issues have been allegedly accentuated using the mode and method of the justice area officials. But, in reality, the overall situation of the administration of criminal justice can also more often than not be depicted as coercive, dilatory, time-eating, and adversarial, with acute arrear of instances at extraordinary tiers of courts.
However, the deterioration in excellent justice is arguably an awful lot starker than the mounting backlog of cases. Though, over time, some detached and 1/2-hearted endeavors have been made to cast off the procedural trappings and make sure powerful justice, the crisis in the machine of justice is infinitely complicated.
It is often alleged that lawlessness within the sorts of impunity and abuses of the coercive authority of the kingdom has no longer most effective been tremendous but also systematic inside country-centric formal justice arrangements. More so, many crimes also stay unreported to the equipment of law.
Most of the criminal law, methods, institutions, and concepts that developed at some stage in the British duration (1757-1947) nevertheless govern the functioning of the crook justice machine. Alongside the consistent increase of a series of unique legal guidelines within the Seventies and afterward, some palliative reforms have additionally been initiated for you to easing the strain in the crook procedure.
However, the proper utility of criminal regulation can be puzzled in terms of welfare and effectiveness. Perhaps disenfranchised sections, inclusive of ladies and the negative, undergo the burn of abuse of the legal procedure.
At times the pro-lively position of the judiciary and private prison aid organizations in protecting the rights of the women and unfortunate sufferers are commendable.