Are court cases really declining, or are the files just moving?

The files piled up in the corridors of the courts seem like layers of time pressing down on people’s long wait for justice. A single case can involve an entire family, a property, or questions of freedom and justice. With the aim of easing that burden of waiting, the rate of case disposal increased in both divisions of the Supreme Court in 2026. In the first eight months of the year alone, the Appellate Division disposed of 11,136 cases, while the High Court Division disposed of 87,596. As the number of disposed cases exceeded the number of newly filed cases, the overall backlog also declined.

But has the wait of litigants who have stood at the doors of the courts for years really become shorter? Or have old files simply been moved off the shelves, making the numbers look better? Behind this apparent acceleration in case disposal lies the bigger question: Is justice actually being delivered, or are we merely reducing the number of files on paper?

According to Supreme Court statistics, 9,139 new cases were filed in the Appellate Division between January and August, while 11,136 cases were disposed of. That means 1,997 more cases were disposed of than were filed. At the beginning of the year, 41,551 cases were pending, but by the end of August, that number had fallen to 39,554.

The figure is significant not only in comparison with the current year but also against the previous five years. Between 2021 and 2025, the Appellate Division disposed of 6,859, 5,406, 5,349, 5,312 and 7,553 cases respectively. The annual average over those five years was approximately 6,096 cases. In contrast, nearly twice that average had already been disposed of in just the first eight months of 2026.

The picture is even more striking in the High Court Division. In the first eight months of the year, 87,596 cases were disposed of against 74,607 newly filed cases. In other words, 12,989 more cases were disposed of than were filed. The number of pending cases stood at 659,256 at the beginning of the year but fell to 646,276 by the end of August.

The pace of disposal was particularly noticeable in July and August. A total of 52,297 cases were disposed of during these two months. In the entire year of 2025, the High Court had disposed of 55,756 cases; the figure for just the first eight months of this year has already surpassed that number.

However, some lawyers have questioned how this success should be interpreted. Fawzia Karim Firoze, a human rights activist and Supreme Court lawyer, said that some pending cases in the Appellate Division had been sent to subordinate courts for expedited hearings. As a result, she argued, not all cases counted as “disposed of” in the statistics can necessarily be considered finally resolved.

Senior Supreme Court lawyer Barrister Omar Faruk has also described a significant portion of the High Court’s disposals as file-based disposal of old cases. According to him, the figure has increased because cases that had remained pending for a long time were disposed of together.

Another senior lawyer, Barrister Badruddoza Badal, alleged that many very old cases involving matters where “no step is to be taken” can be disposed of through a common order. As a result, while the number of cases disposed of may rise statistically, the bigger question is how much this actually shortens the wait for litigants. Barrister Badal believes that an adequate number of judges is necessary to reduce the backlog permanently. In his view, unless the number of judges is increased, individual benches will continue to face an enormous burden of cases.

This raises another question: Will the momentum seen in the Supreme Court also spread to the lower courts across the country? The flow of the justice system does not stop at the doors of the highest court. Even when a case is disposed of by a higher court, its effects may continue in subordinate courts through related proceedings, evidence, documents, bail matters, appeals or rehearings. Therefore, before concluding that the overall backlog in the justice system has declined simply because the Supreme Court’s figures have fallen, it is necessary to examine the picture of the entire judicial system.

There is no denying that the number of pending cases is declining, and that is important. But for a litigant, the real measure of success is not found in a statistical column. It is found in that moment when, after the final hearing, they walk out of the courtroom and can finally say: “At last, I have received justice.”

Only if the momentum of the Supreme Court’s faster disposal reaches the long corridors of the subordinate courts will these statistics about a declining case backlog truly become a story of relief for ordinary people.