Shawdesh desk:

The High Court on Sunday granted bail to Prothom Alo editor and publisher Matiur Rahman for six weeks in a case filed against him and a reporter of the daily, among others, under the Digital Security Act-2018 over a report on high food prices on March 26.

The bench of Justice Mustafa Zaman Islam and Md Aminul Islam granted Matiur the bail after he surrendered to the court online seeking anticipatory bail.

Matiur will need to appear before the Dhaka Metropolitan Sessions Judge Court within six weeks to seek fresh bail in the case.

Supreme Court lawyer and ruling Awami League-backed Bangabandhu Chhatra Foundation chief executive Abdul Malek alias Mashiur Malek filed the case with the Ramna police station in the capital on the night of March 29 against Prothom Alo editor Matiur Rahman, the daily’s Savar correspondent Samsuzzaman and its unnamed photojournalist and some other unnamed persons under Sections 25(2), 31, and 35 of the DSA for publishing the report.

The court observed that the DSA case should not have been filed as the daily after being aware of its mistake published a corrigendum and revised the report.

The court further observed that the aggrieved persons could have gone to the Bangladesh Press Council over the report.

The court said that it could not understand how the lawyer was affected by the news report to be competent to file the DSA case.

Additional attorney general Mehedi Hassan Chowdhury and deputy attorney general Sujit Chatterjee opposed Matiur Rahman’s bail, stating that Prothom Alo’s reporter Samsuzzaman Shams, being motivated by a vested interest, prepared the report along with the picture of a child to tarnish the image of the country and the government as a similar news item was made up in 1974, including the picture of a mentally sick woman named Bashanti of Kurigram dressed in a net in order to spread fear of a famine in Bangladesh.

The court then said that none had come forward to provide legal assistance to Bashanti, who later died.

Matiur Rahman’s lawyer and former attorney general Fida M Kamal told the court that Ekattor Television, being politically-motivated, ran a report to mislead people only to harass and humiliate his client.

He argued that Matiur, a freedom fighter, became a target of vested interests because of his role as independent journalist.

He said that the report in question was uploaded to Prothom Alo’s online edition at 8:29am on March 26 and it was later withdrawn after the error in it came to the notice of the editor.

Earlier, on March 29, reporter Samsuzzaman was picked up by a group of plainclothes people introducing themselves as Criminal Investigation Department officials from his rented house at Savar on the outskirts of the capital Dhaka at about 4:00am.

He was picked up about two hours after a case was filed under the DSA by an Awami Juba League leader with the Tejgaon police station at about 2:15am on March 29.

The filing of the cases under the DSA and the arrest of Samsuzzaman triggered local and international condemnations while protest rallies and human chains continued to be staged in Dhaka and elsewhere, demanding the scrapping of the DSA and the immediate release of the journalist.

Fida was assisted by lawyers ZI Khan Panna, Syeda Rizwana Hasan, Imtiaz Mahmood, Prashanta Kumar Karmokar and Abdullah Al Noman.