The government plans to constitute at least another 27 metropolitan magistrate's court in Dhaka in addition to the existing 23 in a bid to break case logjam.
Besides, it is also going to set up courthouses in the northern and southern Dhaka to facilitate courtgoers.
A high-level meeting of Ministry
of Home Affairs was also told that the government would start distribution of machine-readable passport (MRP) from January next year to prevent passport forgery.
"Dhaka is a city of about 1.4 crore people but the number of magistrate's court is only 23. We are planning to constitute at least 50 courts," State Minister for Home Affairs Lutfozzaman Babar told reporters yesterday.
He said the people of Dhaka now have to rush from one corner of the city to another for any court-related work.
"We're planning to set up another courthouse in the northern part to facilitate the court-goers. One CMM (chief metropolitan magistrate) and two additional CMMs will be there and the additional CMMs will be responsible for
each courthouse, to be supervised by the CMM."
The construction of the courthouses will be complete in two years, Babar said, emerging from the meeting that reviewed the achievements on the law and order front in four years of the coalition government.
A proposal is there for setting up the new courthouse for the northern part at Sher-e-Bangla Nagar in Tejgaon.
CMM Jalal Ahmed told The Daily Star that the issues of raising the number of courts and setting up of a separate courthouse were discussed at the meeting, but no decision was made. "New Delhi has 166 courts for 80 lakh people, but we have only 23 courts for 1.2 crore people," he said.
The demand for formation of more courts has been there for long and the previous Awami League government constituted three courts in 2001, pushing the number up to 23.
The issue of increasing the metropolitan magistrate's court was again raised when Dhaka Metropolitan Police decided to raise the number of police stations from 20 to 51. "We will need more magistrates when there will be 51 (police stations)," said the CMM.
Sources said a proposal is going to be placed before the government for raising number of metropolitan courts to 75.
"Twenty three courts are not enough for the large number of people living in Dhaka," Metropolitan Magistrate Shafiq Anwar told The Daily Star yesterday.
Presently, 40,000 cases are awaiting disposal in the CMM's court and each magistrate has to deal with about 2,000 cases on average, another metropolitan magistrate told The Daily Star. "To maintain quality, a magistrate should not deal with more than 500 cases."
Anwar suggested at least 80 magistrates should be there to smoothly deal with cases pending for disposal and being filed every day.
MACHINE READABLE PASSPORT, VISA, NATIONAL ID CARDS
Babar told reporters that the government is working to introduce national identity cards, machine-readable passports and machine-readable visas soon.
The process of introducing national ID cards and online visa is underway while the government will start distributing MRP from January, said a meeting source.
Asked about the status of the MRP project, some officials at the Department of Immigration and Passport, however, said the government might miss the schedule.
The meeting was told that the department paid the government Tk 430 crore as revenue in the last four years.
The immigration department of Zia International Airport has been brought under computerised database system and law-enforcers have recovered 110 stolen passport, the meeting was further told.
CID, SB TO WORK INDEPENDENTLY IN DISTRICTS
The meeting decided to allow the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and Special Branch (SB) of the police to operate independently in the districts, where they will have their own officers and own office. Presently, they work under an SP (superintendent of police).
Besides, steps have been taken to bring the CID, SB and immigration departments under a computer network.
REFORM STEPS
The state minister for home said they have introduced new, innovative ideas in last four years to modernise the ministry and Bangladesh Police (including Rab, CID and SB), Bangladesh Rifles, Ansar and VDP, Narcotics Control, Directorate of Prisons, Metropolitan Magistracy, Fire Service and Civil Defence, Immigration and Passport and Bangladesh Coastguard.
The ministry is now working to reform the Police Regulations of Bengal and going to train up the staff, increase manpower and provide modern equipment for the police, prisons and coastguard departments.
Besides drafting in 13,000 manpower for the police, Rab (Rapid Action Battalion) and Highway Police have been introduced and reforms to the police organogram are on.
"We have already increased the number of police stations in the DMP area from 22 to 28 and 23 more would be set up by next year," the state minister told reporters.
As part of modernisation of the Coastguard Department, letters of credit have been opened for buying ships for the department and 2,500 members have been recruited during the tenure of the government, the meeting was told.
On stopping illegal migration and trafficking in humans, Babar said: "This problem cannot be entirely resolved until the national ID card system is introduced."
On investigation into August 21 grenade attack, he said, "More time will be needed for the investigation and, if needed, Interpol and FBI would again be invited."