Chittagong teens held under ICT Act get bail

Two youths, detained under the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Act in Chittagong for allegedly inciting religious hatred, have been granted bail.

Chittagong Bureaubdnews24.com
Published : 24 April 2014, 02:43 PM
Updated : 24 April 2014, 03:11 PM

Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) examinees Kazi Mahmudur Rahman Raihan Rahi, 18, and Ullash Das, 18, were picked up from Chawkbazar on Apr 2 under the much-debated Act.

Chittagong Metropolitan Magistrate’s court bailed them on Thursday on a bond of Tk 5,000 each, defence lawyer Asif Uddin Ahmed Chowdhury said.

They have been ordered to show up at the court every Thursday until the matter was resolved.

Local human rights body ‘Liro’ assisted the defence.

The defence says the prison authorities are yet to get the bail documents and expects the two to be freed by Friday.

A group of online activists espousing secularism, claimed the teens had been detained at the instigation of blog activist Farabi Shafiul Alam, who is said to have advocated militancy in the past, and the Islami Chhatra Shibir, the student front of the Jamaat-e-Islami.

Rahi had commented on an online post by Farabi criticising another post by Abhijit Roy, founder of the blog ‘Muktomona’.

Farabi later claimed in a Facebook post that Rahi was detained for commenting on the post.

He had threatened to kill the cleric who would conduct the funeral prayer for Ganajagaran Mancha activist and blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider last year.

Police had arrested him in Chittagong on Feb 24 last year but he secured bail.