THE warning of the High Court coming for executive magistrates not to operate mobile courts sitting in the office is welcome. The court has also asked the cabinet secretary to arrange for training of executive magistrates so that they adhere to the Mobile Court Act 2009. The court has said this when it disposed of an application that sought the High Court’s intervention in the release of two minors jailed by an executive magistrate in Netrakona on August 1 by running a mobile court at the office. The court also expressed concern about the alleged misuse of the law by the executive magistrate. The court also observed that in the case at hand, the executive magistrate, who admitted to the mistake saying that she committed it ‘in good faith’, did not follow the law, which requires magistrates to run mobile courts on location and sentence imprisonment to offenders only on offender’s confession. The executive magistrate also did not follow an earlier directive of the High Court, which in March 2020 declared the trial and punishment of children by mobile courts illegal.

The High Court has more than once observed and legal experts have iterated that mobile court operation is an affront to the independence of the judiciary and contrary to the basic tenets of the constitution. As mobile courts act as the prosecutor and the judge at the same time, they often deny the accused a proper defence. While the law authorises mobile courts to punish perpetrators on the spot for offences taking place in the presence of magistrates or two witnesses or on the perpetrator’s confession, there are many cases when magistrates have abused the power. A mobile court in March 2020 arrested a journalist at Kurigram, took him to the deputy commissioner’s office where he was tortured, jailed for a year and fined Tk 50,000. Another case in point is an executive magistrate fining a shop owner on December 14, 2017 on allegations that the shop owner misbehaved with the magistrate’s wife. The other such incident was the blanket jailing of 121 children by a mobile court run by the Rapid Action Battalion in October 2019 that was later quashed through a ruling that the High Court issued suo moto. Mobile courts are also reported to have violated the provision that requires magistrates to file cases and send offenders, in the absence of confession, to courts.

While a government appeal challenging the High Court’s verdict declaring the mobile court operation by executive magistrates unconstitutional is pending with the Appellate Division, all quarters must ensure that mobile court powers are not misused or abused as long as its operation is in place. The government must also ensure that mobile courts do not try children while the cabinet division must arrange for training of executive magistrates.