Staff Reporter :
The High Court (HC) on Tuesday ordered the government to immediately send Photo Journalist Shahidul Alam to Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University (BSMMU) for his treatment, a day after he was placed on a seven-day remand.
A Dhaka court on Monday placed Shahidul Alam on remand in a case filed under the Section 57 of ICT Act on charges of spreading propaganda and false information about the government.
In response to a writ petition, the High Court bench of Justice Syed Muhammad Dastagir Husain and Justice Md Iqbal Kabir passed the order and asked the BSMMU authorities to form a medical board for examining the health condition of Shahidul and submit a report in the court by 10:30 am Thursday. The court also fixed Thursday for further hearing on the issue.
Earlier in the day, Shahidul’s wife Rahnuma Ahmed, former teacher of Jahangirnagar University, filed the writ petition with the High Court challenging a lower court order that placed Shahidul Alam on remand.
In the petition, Rahnuma also prayed to the HC to stay the remand order and to send Shahidul to hospital for treatment.
Barrister Jyotirmoy Barua and Barrister Tanim Hussain Shawon, two lawyers for the writ petitioner, told that Shahidul cannot be taken on remand and interrogated following the HC order.
Shahidul will be in the hospital under police guard until further HC order, they said.
Dr Kamal Hossain and Barrister Sara Hossain appeared in the court for the petitioner.
Shahidul, 63, was picked up by plainclothes men on Sunday night from his Dhanmondi flat.
Detective Branch’s members later produced him in the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate’s Court at Old Dhaka on Monday showing him arrested in the ICT Act case.
Barrister Sara Hossain was placing argues in the court for the suspension of Shahidul’s remand. Then the court commented that “fortunate that he did not disappear.”
After the court’s order, Dr Kamal Hossain said, “As the court ordered to immediately send him to the hospital, we hope, his remand will be stayed till then.”
In response to a query, Barrister Tanim Hussain Shawon said, “Shahidul was tortured brutally before producing in the court. And he is sick. His constitutional and fundamental rights were violated by sending him in remand.”
IGP, DIG (DB) and Officer-in-Charge of Ramna Police Station were made respondents in the writ petition, Barrister Jyotirmoy Barua said.
Shahidul Alam, Founder of Drik Gallery, was detained few hours after he had given an interview to Doha-based television channel Al Jazeera on the ongoing student protests for road safety. He criticized the government in the interview.
On Sunday night, a band of plainclothes police picked up Shahidul from his house at Dhanmondi. The law enforcers produced him in the court of Chief Metropolitan Magistrate of Dhaka after filing a case against him under Section 57(2) of ICT Act.
Dhaka Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime Unit Inspector Arman Ali produced Shahidul in the court seeking him to be interrogated in police custody for 10 days to find his unnamed local and international friends made accused in the case.
Investigation officer Arman Ali stated that Shahidul was arrested in the case filed under Section 57(2) of the ICT Act on charge of spreading ‘imaginary propaganda against the government’ on his Face book page that ‘triggered panic among public and caused deterioration of law and order.’
In the trial court, Shahidul said, “I was hit (in custody). I bled.”
Then the general recording officer of the court Sub-Inspector Mahmudur Rahman told the court how it could be possible for the accused to speak if he was hit in the face.
Shahidul said when he was working in his house on Sunday night the doorbell rang. “As I opened the door, a little girl appeared and asked whether I am Shahidul. Then a group people dashed into my apartment and whisked me off to the lift and then got me on a microbus,” he said.
Shahidul said that they kept him handcuffed all the night and hurled abusive words. Few of them also quizzed him with dignity citing his international fame, Shahidul told the court.
