The government must do more to ensure an effective and sweeping witness protection law is passed and then strictly enforced in order to keep safe anyone who is a witness in a court case.
Its bad enough that we see criminals getting away with their crimes, but worse, we see witnesses to such crimes being intimidated, attacked and even killed by the very same perpetrators.
Many countries worldwide have made witness tampering a punishable offence, and Bangladesh must do the same. Our government must step in to put an end to all heinous crimes committed against witnesses so as to ensure rule of law.
Though the law ministry created a draft of the Witness Protection Law 2011, once it was sent to home ministry for review, nothing more was done.
Instead the draft was put on the back burner, which suggests how little importance the home ministry gives to the protection of witnesses.
Bear in mind that with no witness protection law in place, we cannot expect to have justice.
It’s time to stop mulling over the draft of a witness protection law. In fact, it’s high time that the witness protection law was brought out of the home ministry’s “deep freezer.”
