Separation of civil, criminal courts to speed up justice delivery: Govt

The government on Thursday said that separating civil and criminal courts will help speed up the delivery of justice and reduce the massive backlog of cases in the country's courts.

According to a notification by the Ministry of Law, civil and criminal courts have now been fully separated at the district level for the first time in Bangladesh's history.

The move is intended to improve the pace of judicial proceedings and ease the burden of pending cases.

Previously, district-level judges, including Joint District Judges, Additional District Judges, and District Judges, had to handle both civil and criminal (sessions) cases simultaneously.

This dual responsibility was widely regarded as a major cause of judicial delays and the growing backlog of cases.

At present, around 16 lakh civil cases and 23 lakh criminal cases are pending in lower courts across the country.

Despite the higher number of criminal cases, the same judges were handling both civil and criminal matters, significantly slowing down trials.

To address this, the government has established 203 Additional Sessions Courts and 367 Joint Sessions Courts, which will deal exclusively with criminal cases.

Judges in these courts will no longer be assigned civil cases, the notification adds.

The ministry expressed hope that this landmark decision will eliminate the dual workload of judges, expedite case disposal, and reduce the overall backlog in both civil and criminal courts.