Blogger Asif detained

Police on Wednesday detained blogger Asif Mohiuddin from Dhaka, Detective Branch’s Deputy Commissioner Molla Nazrul Islam told bdnews24.com.

The detention follows Tuesday’s arrests of three bloggers for alleged ‘inflammatory postings’ in Internet blogs pertaining to sensitive religious issues.

Hifazat-e-Islam, an Islamist platform, demanded detention of ‘atheist bloggers' and threatened to undertake a march from Chittagong to Dhaka on Apr 6 to push for it.

On Monday three bloggers -- Subrata Adhikari Shuvo, Mashiur Rahman Biplob and Russell Parvez – were arrested on charges of hurting people’s religious sentiments following the demand of Hifazat. They also took them in their custody for quizzing following a court order.

Several online activists have responded to the arrest of the three bloggers. Amarblog.com authorities have closed down their blog site after the arrests in protest.

An announcement on the blog’s homepage says the site will reopen only after the bloggers were released unconditionally.

Imran H Sarkar, spokesperson for the Ganajagaran Mancha, has also slated the government for the arrests.

Some bloggers and online activists initiated protest at Shahbagh on Feb 5 seeking capital punishment to war criminals and a ban on Jamaat-e-Islami after the War Crimes Tribunal-2 gave life term to the party’s Assistant Secretary General Abdul Quader Molla.

Later, the protest turned into a mass uprising as it spread across the country.

Hifazat, a group based in Chittagong, had been opposing the movement since its beginning alleging that the protesters had defamed Islam.

The radical group also demanded that the Ganajagaran Mancha be taken down and ten ‘atheists’ bloggers, including Asif, be executed.

Detectives of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) had earlier held the Asif for only 18 hours and later released him advising him to ‘stop writing.’

He had also come under attack by unknown miscreants on the night of Jan 14 supposedly for his write-ups in the blogs.

He was later treated as Dhaka Medical College Hospital. Detectives detained four youths from several parts of the city on Apr 1 for their suspected involvement in the attack on Asif.

They are Saad Al Nahin, 24, Mohammad Kawsar, 26, Mohammad Kamal, 23 and ‘Kamal’ 28.

The police said they confessed to attacking Asif during preliminary interrogation.

The government recently formed a committee to scrutinise postings on Facebook and in blogs in the wake of demands by some organisations that oppose the Ganajagaran Mancha.

Home Minister Mohiuddin Khan Alamgir and Law Minister Shafique Ahmed announced at a joint press briefing that immediate action would be taken against those trying to hurt people’s religious sentiment through internet postings.

According to Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC), there are at least 30 million internet subscribers and 3.2 million Facebook users in Bangladesh.