Evidence Storage Difficulties
A very disturbing news item has been published Thursday in a leading vernacular daily. The report states that around 30 thousand items of physical evidence relating to thousands of cases in the court of Chief Metropolitan Magistrate are about to be destroyed or damaged because of improper preservation caused by lack of space in the malkhana (store). Objects such as weapons of crime, arms and ammunition, dresses, impounded vehicles and even foreign currency are very important for both the prosecution and defense lawyers. And the time consumed for a case to be finally disposed of is so long that in most cases it runs into years. As such preservation of the physical evidence is all the more important and significant till the cases are finally settled. It is quite natural that hundreds of cases are filed with the court of Chief Metropolitan Magistrate in Dhaka city alone. There are other courts also where cases are filed, and put together the total number can be staggering. Then there are tons of documents and related papers that have to be preserved, at least till the disposal of the cases.
The job of preserving the conventional crime weapons like knife, axe, machete etc., has been made difficult by their sheer numbers and added to this problem has arrived the modern weaponry like, guns, revolver, pistol, rifles, sawn-rifles, grenades, home-made bombs and various types of ammunition. Not only space, proper inventory is also necessary for safe keeping of these lethal weapons. Some manpower is also needed. To add to the misery of the lawmen large objects like bus, truck, private car and rickshaw have to be accommodated on the court compound much to the discomfort also of thousands of people who came to the court everyday. Let's have proper impounding yard under the supervision of police as are seen in civilised countries of the world.
This is only the tip of the ice-berg. Imagine the situation in the context of all the 64 district headquarters of the country and then add the 'upazilla' courts of the future to the scenario. The problem has already gone out of hand and further delay in the redress of it will imperil the entire system of judiciary and magistracy in the country leading to the aggravation of the suffering of the paying public who seek justice not for fun but out of necessity.
Micro-filming and use of computer memory for preservation of important documents will be in order. Still, adequate space and proper structures need to be provided for keeping the tools of physical evidence.
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