Around 60% cases remain pending with Chittagong Divisional Environment Court.
According to court sources, as many as 392 cases have been lodged with Chittagong Divisional Environment Court in the last 14 years.
However, the Environment Court disposed of only 159 cases. Of the unresolved 233 cases, the investigating authorities could not complete investigation into 200 cases.
Three cases in 2002, 5 in 2004, 16 in 2005, 36 in 2006, 60 in 2007, 42 in 2008, 57 in 2009, 58 in 2010, 49 in 2011, 18 in 2012, 15 2013, 28 in 2014, 4 in 2015 and only one case was lodged with Chittagong Divisional Environment Court in 2016.
The officials of the Department of Environment (DoE) are the plaintiffs in most of the cases lodged with Environment Court.
Most of the cases filed with the court are related to hill cutting, brick kiln and illegal manufacturing of polythene.
The procrastination of case disposal was responsible for the ‘dilly-dally attitude’ of the investigating officers.
Therefore, the case backlog is resulting in environmental degradation. The collected evidences of the cases are also getting damaged due to the slow pace in investigation.
The green activists alleged that there is an unholy nexus between the DoE officials and the offenders since the convicts were getting away with simply paying mere fines due to ‘lenient’ investigation carried out by the DoE officers.
No offender has so far been sentenced with imprisonment in the last 14 years in the cases filed by the DoE. The offenders are getting released from the charges due to the ‘poor’ investigation carried out by the inexperienced investigators.
“The slow pace of investigation by the DoE officials is really frustrating. With the increase in manpower, the DoE should speed up the investigation. The convicted persons usually get light punishment as they choose penalty over jail sentences,” said Anwarul Islam Chowdhury, coordinator of Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association (BELA), Chittagong.
Md Badrul Alam, Special Public Prosecutor of Chittagong Divisional Environment Court said most of the DoE officials did not know how to investigate the cases properly.
“Most of the DoE officials regrettably lack the necessary expertise of investigating the cases. Most of the officials do not know how to lodge a case, prepare a seizure list and investigate into a case. Quick disposal of cases is greatly obstructed when the investigation proceeds at a snail’s pace,” said the Special Public Prosecutor.
“The DoE should impart training to their officials as to how to investigate a case. We have been reminding repeatedly the investigators of submitting investigation report without delay,” said the Special PP.
Talking to the Dhaka Tribune, Md Mokbul Hossain, director, DoE, Chittagong Region said they could not submit the investigation reports due to insufficient manpower.
The government had established two environment courts in Dhaka and Chittagong in 2002. The government had set up another court in Sylhet in 2005. In 2002, the government established the Environment Appellate Court in Dhaka.
