Sri Lanka courts face over 1 million-case backlog

Colombo, July 02 (Daily Mirror) - Sri Lanka’s justice system is under strain, with more than 1.1 million cases pending nationwide, exposing a severe mismatch between caseload and court capacity, Supreme Court Justice Yasantha Kodagoda said.

Speaking at an event, Justice Kodagoda said the sheer volume of pending litigation is placing extraordinary pressure on a court system that operates with limited resources across all levels.

He noted that the backlog is spread across just 333 courts islandwide, ranging from magistrate and district courts to High Courts, appellate courts and the Supreme Court.

“If distributed evenly, each court would be handling over 3,300 cases,” he said, pointing to structural bottlenecks that continue to slow down the delivery of justice.

Justice Kodagoda said the issue is not only the number of cases, but the capacity of the system to process them efficiently, citing shortages in judges, legal officers and support staff.

He explained that even a single criminal case moves through multiple stages — from police investigation to magistrate proceedings, Attorney General’s indictment, High Court trial and final judgment — contributing to long delays.

A 2013 assessment, he said, already showed that a full criminal case cycle takes more than a decade to conclude, a timeline that has remained largely unchanged.