INDIA: As India's western port city of Bombay prepares to celebrate the 125th anniversary of its impressive high court building next month, thousands of litigants and witnesses that daily throng its cavernous corridors have a simple prayer: provide toilets on the premises.
For them the stinking, overflowing, public and fee-charging toilet just outside the three-storey Gothic structure is the only one that offers immediate relief as they patiently wait, sometimes for months, for the slow wheels of justice to grind.
"The high court's lack of public toilet facilities and wash rooms, especially for ladies, poses a major problem. But being a heritage building, there are restrictions in constructing any new ones without contravening rules," lawyer Rui Rodrigues said.
Gautam Patel, secretary of the Bombay Bar Association, said it was "shocking" that the city's highly regarded high court, built principally for litigants, offered neither toilets nor a waiting room.
"It is not a user-friendly place for outsiders," he lamented.
Judges, lawyers and court officers, however, face no such discomfort.
They have easy access to toilets either in their chambers, the library or bar room, places the public cannot enter.
"We do not go to the Oval to relieve ourselves " Bombay's advocate general Goolam Vahanvati said, referring to the large park adjoining the court.
And though court officials admitted to feeling "bad " about the lack of public toilets, there appeared to be no imminent plans to redress this shortcoming.