ZCZC
BSS-04
PM-LEGAL-AID-DAY
PM orders speedy disposal of rape, arson cases
DHAKA, April 28, 2019 (BSS) – Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina today asked
authorities concerned to dispose the cases involving rapes and arson causing
deaths to expose the culprits to stern punitive actions in soonest possible
time.
“Now, it is being seen that the rape, murder, arson attack, and killing
people by setting fire are going on due to social degradation,” she said
while opening the National Legal Aid Services Day, 2019 at a hotel here.
The premier asked the authorities concerned to take immediate measures for
speedy trial of the cases and ensure tougher punishment to the people
involved in the misdeeds as the country as well as the nation want to get
relief of the social menace.
She issued directives against the backdrop of recently killing a Feni
Madrasha student Nusrat Jahan Rafi by setting her on fire and multiple
incidents of rape, murder, and arson attacks across the country.
The prime minister asked the law ministry to take appropriate actions in
disposing of the long pending cases as many people are currently languishing
in jails without knowing their faults and reasons to stay in the prison,
saying, “They even don’t know how to get legal aid services.”
She said her government wants each of the people get justice and asked the
authorities concerned to take measures to this end.
Referring to her own past experience, the premier said: “I don’t want
anyone like us to cry without getting justice”, adding that “The then
government had passed indemnity ordinance as we could not want justice for
killing my father, mother and brothers (on August 15 in 1975).”
“I even couldn’t file a case over the matter,” she said.
After assuming office in 1996, the Awami League annulled the ordinance and
filed the assassination case of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh
Mujibur Rahman, she mentioned.
“Despite being demand of trial of the case in the special tribunal, I sent
it to the ordinary court for its trial as we wanted to get justice likewise
the ordinary people,” she said.
The BNP-Jamaat had announced hartal on the day of delivering the verdict in
the case, she continued.
Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Anisul Huq presided over
the function.
Secretary of Law and Justice Division of the ministry ASSM Zahurul Haque
also spoke while Director of National Legal Aid Services Organization (NLASO)
Md. Aminul Islam gave welcome address on the occasion.
Two people, a woman from Manikganj and a youth from Cumilla, who got the
legal aid services from NALSO free of cost, narrated how they got relieve
from civil cases, for which they fought legal battle for long five years,
through the Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) system at the quickest
possible time.
Both of them thanked the premier for taking such measures to mitigate the
sufferings of the litigants.
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