Supreme Court resumes physical hearing

The Supreme Court (SC) resumed physical hearings on Wednesday after more than one and a half years since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic last year.

The five-member Appellate Division bench headed by Chief Justice Syed Mahmud Hossain started holding hearings from 9am.

The chief justice at the start of the day’s proceedings said many cases were disposed of via virtual hearings in the last one and half years.

“The Appellate Division had 24,000 pending cases, of which now around 15,500 remain. The rest were disposed of virtually," he said.

The chief justice last year had to declare a general holiday for all courts across the country from March 26 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The government on May 9, 2020, issued the “Ordinance for Usage of Information and Communication Technology by Court, 2020”, two days after getting approval from the cabinet, allowing courts to hold trials virtually.

The government had come up with the decision to issue the ordinance to keep serving the justice seekers by different courts.

On May 10, the chief justice issued directives and a user manual in line with the ordinance, allowing regular court proceedings to be conducted virtually during the Covid-19 lockdown in Bangladesh.