Bangladesh’s constitution promises equal legal protection for all, yet millions of citizens, especially in the rural areas, are left out of the justice process due to distance, delay, and exploitation. As courts and legal aid offices remain concentrated in district towns, pursuing justice becomes an unaffordable journey for many.
Take the case of Salma Begum (not her real name), clutching a folded bundle of papers at the Rangpur bus terminal. The documents include a police report, a legal aid certificate, and a handwritten list of dates she cannot read. Salma has been travelling since 4:00 am from her village to attend a hearing in a district court she never saw before. She knows that if she returns without progress, she will have to borrow money again.
For millions of Bangladeshis, this journey—physical, financial, and emotional—is what it takes to reach the justice system. The constitution promises equality before the law and protection of legal rights for all citizens. The state has enacted legal aid legislation to support those who cannot afford representation. Courts exist, judges are appointed, and reforms are regularly announced. Yet justice, for many, remains distant in the most literal sense.
Most judicial magistrate courts and civil courts in Bangladesh have historically operated from district headquarters, even when they are formally assigned to serve individual upazilas. Legal aid offices are similarly concentrated in district towns. Abdul Karim (not his real name), a marginal farmer from Bakshiganj, filed a civil suit after a neighbour encroached on his land. To attend hearings, he travelled more than 60 kilometres to the district court. Each visit meant losing a day’s wage and paying for transport and food. After months of adjournments, Karim stopped attending. The case did not end. His participation did. “I did not lose in court,” he says. “I lost on the road.” Such attrition is common. Cases collapse because persistence requires resources that the poor do not have.
Theoretically, legal aid is supposed to fill this gap. In practice, it often cannot. Shahana Akter (not her real name), a rural housewife seeking maintenance after abandonment, qualified for state-funded legal assistance. Her lawyer was free. Getting to court was not. Twice, she borrowed money to attend hearings that were postponed. The third time, she stayed home.
Legal aid in Bangladesh covers representation, not transport, accommodation, or lost income. When courts remain distant, legal aid becomes a partial promise—helpful to those who can reach the system, insufficient for those who cannot. Distance also breeds dependence. District courts are crowded, unfamiliar spaces for rural litigants, many of whom have limited literacy and little understanding of procedure. In this environment, informal intermediaries thrive. Many get scammed by brokers who are structural by-products of centralisation and thrive on exploiting confusion, delay, and distance.
The constitution, again, offers no barrier to judicial decentralisation. On the contrary, it encourages it.However, the right to protection of law weakens when remedies are physically distant. Commitments to social justice and non-discrimination cannot be fulfilled by a justice system concentrated in urban centres. The constitution also empowers the state to organise and expand subordinate courts to meet public necessity, and recent judicial reforms mean that there could be more of them in the future. But the scarcity of upazila-level courts persists. This is not a legal limitation; it is a policy choice.
Establishing magistrate and civil courts at the upazila level would not be revolutionary. It would be corrective. Litigants would spend less on travel and lose fewer working days. District courts would see reduced congestion. Court-annexed mediation could operate where disputes arise, rather than as a distant procedural option. Most importantly, relocating legal aid services to the upazila level would widen access. Justice functions best when it is local, visible, and accountable.
Neighbouring countries have experimented with bringing justice closer to citizens through local courts and community-based dispute resolution mechanisms like Gram Nyayalayas, which are mobile, village-level courts in India, established under the Gram Nyayalayas Act, 2008. Such models are not flawless, but they recognise a basic truth: justice that remains far away favours the powerful and exhausts the poor.
Bangladesh does not need sweeping new laws or ambitious declarations. It needs functional courts where disputes arise, and legal aid offices where poverty resides. A justice system that cannot be accessed cannot protect.
Md. Arifujjaman is additional district judge at Solicitor Wing of the Law and Justice Division at the Ministry of Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs. He can be reached at [email protected].
Views expressed in this article are the author's own.
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