Forty-five accused of spreading rumours on social media during road safety movement

Police have arrested three people on charges of malicious rumour-mongering on the social media during student protests for safe roads.

They are looking for 42 others accused in two cases started over the spreading of rumours.

The three arrested on Sunday night are Mahbubur Rahman Arman, 26, Md Alamgir Hossain, 31, and Saidul Islam Towhid, 26.

Police produced them in court on Monday and took them in their custody for a five-day questioning.

“They were spreading unfounded and misleading information through live broadcasting on Facebook,” said Nazmul Alam, an additional deputy commissioner at the police’s cyber security and crime department.

Police started two cases against 45 people under the ICT Act at their Ramna station after the rumours like deaths and rapes of protesters spread on the social media.

Mahbubur Rahman Arman

One of the arrested people, Arman, claims to be a ‘cyber analyst’ and blamed Saidul and Alamgir, members of a page Arman administers, for the posts spreading the rumours.

He, however, took responsibility for the rumours as the admin of the page named ‘Fight for Survivors Right – FSR’ in a post before being arrested.

Earlier, the law enforcers arrested actress Quazi Nawshaba Ahmed on charges of spreading rumours through a live video on Facebook.

Drik Gallery Managing Director photographer-activist Shahidul Alam was also arrested on similar charges after his media comments and social media posts on the issue.