JOURNALIST Faridul Mostafa has been languishing in Cox’s Bazar jail in poor health for the last 11 months after he was arrested in September past year by the then Teknaf Police Station Officer-in-Charge Pradeep Kumar Das. The former OC Pradeep, who is now in jail custody over the killing of retired Army Major Sinha Mohammad Rashed Khan, and his associates filed the cases against Faridul Mostafa for reporting on their misdeeds in Teknaf, Faridul’s family members alleged.
Faridul, 34, is the Editor of Cox’s Bazar based daily Cox’s Bazar Bani and an online portal Janatar Bani, in which he published a series of reports throughout May and June in 2019 on extorting money from people in the name of drug recovery, besides threatening people to kill them in ‘crossfire’.
This is an old story. The police have framed yet another innocent journalist by framing false cases against him using their informants, then they have conveniently planted Yaba and liquor in his possession, and sent him to jail after brutally torturing him. But this by itself is not the problem.
The problem lies with the fact that his wife, like the wife of the salt trader who was also killed by OC Pradeep, wrote an application to the Home Minister and Inspector General of Police seeking help to save him as OC Pradeep had been threatening to kill him, but got no response.
It is shocking to see that a journalist was brutally tortured for reporting on the crimes of the OC Pradeep, and intentionally accused on such an offence from where it is difficult to get bail. But far worse is what has followed. Neither the IGP, nor the Home Minister paid any heed to his wife’s pleas for justice.
The administration should be accountable to the people. Only any administration which is unaccountable can think that the voices of the people can be ignored. There must be a reckoning as to why officers like OC Pradeep and others like the notorious OC Salahuddin can get away by committing brutal crimes with impunity.
The answer is simple — unless the government continues to ignore the voices of the journalists wife and the wife of the salt trader these officers will think that they are free to do whatever they want. But fate has a different reckoning – sooner or later you get what you pay for. The crimes of OC Pradeep have come to haunt him in a way that he could never have imagined.
