When Justice Learns to Wait

Imagine losing someone you love and then spending the next five, ten or fifteen years waiting for the court to decide what happened. The case is still there. The file is still there. The accused may still be there. But life has moved on.

Children who were small when a case began may become adults before it ends. Parents may grow old waiting for an answer. Witnesses may forget what they once remembered clearly. And sometimes, the people who were at the centre of the case are no longer alive when the final judgment comes.
This is the less visible side of criminal justice: the cost of waiting.

We often talk about justice as if it begins and ends with a judgment. Someone is found guilty or not guilty, and the story is supposed to end there. But for the people involved, the story continues throughout the entire process.

For a victim’s family, every court date can bring back the same pain. They may have to travel long distances, miss work, arrange money for transportation and wait for hours, only to hear that the matter has been postponed. Another date is fixed. And they go home. Then they come back again.

Of course, criminal cases cannot and should not be decided overnight. A person’s freedom, reputation and sometimes even life can depend on the outcome of a case. The court has to hear evidence, examine witnesses and give both sides a fair opportunity to present their arguments.

That is exactly why the process matters. But fairness and delay are not the same thing. A fair trial should be careful, but it should also be reasonably timely. Delay creates problems for everyone.

For the victim, it can mean years without closure. For the accused, it can mean living under an accusation for years without knowing when the matter will finally end. An accused person is not automatically guilty simply because a case has been filed against them. The law must protect that principle.

Witnesses face another problem. Human memory is not a recording device. Someone may remember an incident perfectly today but struggle to recall small details years later. A witness may move to another city, become seriously ill or simply become impossible to locate. Evidence can also disappear with time.

So, ironically, excessive delay can make it harder for a court to discover the truth.

There is also a financial side to the problem that is rarely discussed. For many ordinary families, going to court is expensive. There are lawyers to consult, transportation costs to bear and working days to lose. For someone living outside Dhaka or another major city, repeated appearances can become a serious burden.

Justice should not feel like a luxury that only people with sufficient money and free time can comfortably pursue.

This does not mean that every delay is unnecessary. Sometimes a witness genuinely cannot appear. Sometimes a lawyer needs reasonable time to prepare. Sometimes a complicated case requires patience. Courts cannot sacrifice a fair trial simply to reduce the number of pending cases.

The real challenge is distinguishing necessary delay from avoidable delay.

Technology can help here. Digital case records, better case-management systems and easier access to information could reduce some of the unnecessary waiting. When information is properly organized and cases are monitored effectively, it becomes easier to see where a matter is stuck and why. But technology alone will not solve the problem.

Everyone involved in the justice system has a role to play—judges, lawyers, prosecutors, investigators, witnesses and litigants. A hearing should not be postponed simply because someone was not properly prepared when that preparation could have been done earlier. At the same time, genuine reasons for delay must be respected.

There is a temptation to think that the solution is simply to make courts faster.

It is not. Courts need to be better, not merely faster.

A rushed judgment can destroy a person’s life. A careless investigation can send an innocent person into prison. A poorly conducted trial can leave a guilty person unpunished. Speed without fairness is dangerous. But fairness without reasonable efficiency can also become deeply frustrating. Perhaps the biggest danger is what prolonged delay does to people’s faith in the justice system.

When a person repeatedly visits a courthouse and sees the same case continuing year after year, it becomes difficult not to ask: Will this ever end? That question is dangerous for any society.

People must believe that the law can protect them. They must believe that wrongdoing will have consequences and that an innocent person will have a genuine opportunity to prove their innocence. If that confidence disappears, people may begin looking for solutions outside the legal system. That is when the problem becomes bigger than a pending case. It becomes a problem for the rule of law itself.

We should therefore stop thinking of delay as merely an administrative inconvenience. Behind every delayed criminal case is a person waiting for something—a victim waiting for justice, an accused person waiting to clear their name, a witness waiting to finish their responsibility, or a family waiting to close a painful chapter of their lives.

A judgment may take only a few hours to read. But the people waiting for it may have already spent years of their lives getting there. Justice must be careful. It must be independent. It must be fair. But above all, it must be remembered that people cannot put their lives on hold forever.


Anika Raisa studies Law at
Bangladesh University of
Professionals (BUP) in
Mirpur Cantonment, Dhaka.