DSA case: Prothom Alo Editor gets anticipatory bail

The High Court (HC) has granted a six-week anticipatory bail to the Editor of Daily Prothom Alo Matiur Rahman in a case filed under the Digital Security Act (DSA) over a news report.

The HC bench of Justice Mostofa Jaman Islam and Justice Md Aminul Islam passed the order on Sunday afternoon. 

Prashanta Kumar Karmakar, a lawyer of the Editor, confirmed the matter to Jago News.

Earlier on March 29, a lawyer named Abdul Malek filed the case against him with Ramna Police Station in Dhaka. Some unnamed people including reporter Shamsuzzaman Shams and a cameraman were also made accused in the case.

According to the case statement, the report was published on the website of the Daily Prothom Alo with a photo of a child holding flowers in hands in front of the National Mausoleum at Savar on the Independence Day on March 26. Later, the daily shared the news on its Facebook page.

Read more: Prothom Alo Editor Matiur Rahman sued under DSA

The report said that the boy’s name is Jakir Hossain and he said, “What will I do with the independence if I don’t have rice to eat? I sweat when I go to market, we need freedom of fish, meat and rice.”  

The news reported by Shamsuzzaman went viral on social media and thousands of people took screenshots and shared those on social media which tarnished the image of the country and triggered criticism at home and abroad, said the case statement.  

Though the boy was named as Jakir Hossain in the Prothom Alo report, private television channel Ekattor in an investigation found that the boy’s actual name is Sabuj Ahmed. He is the son of a mason of Kurgaon Para in Savar and student of class one. He sometimes sells flowers after school, it said.

The Ekattor report said that the boy did not say anything like “What will I do with the independence if I don’t have rice to eat? And the reporter took his photo after giving him Tk 10.