Published : 10 May 2023, 07:42 PM
Updated : 10 May 2023, 07:42 PM
The Dhaka Cyber Tribunal has considered college student Ishrat Jahan’s time spent in jail as her prison term in a Digital Security Case over hurting religious sentiments in a Facebook post.
Judge AM Zulfiqar Hayat in a verdict on Wednesday set the jail term as two years and seven months, according to tribunal bench assistant Shamim Al Mamun.
In November 2020, the Rapid Action Battalion arrested Ishrat, a student of Begum Badrunnessa College, following complaints over sacrilegious comments on Prophet Muhammad.
A case was filed under the Digital Security Act over the matter with Darussalam police. The chargesheet in the case was submitted in 2022.
Ishrat, who was in jail since her arrest, appeared in front of the tribunal on Wednesday for the hearing of the charges against her.
Defence attorney Golam Mostafa Khan filed a bail petition for Ishrat, a mother of a child, asking the judge to take her “long stay” in jail into account.
During the hearing, the judge said: “She spent a long time in jail. If the accused confesses, I can declare the time she spent in jail as her prison term.”
Ishrat then confessed to her crimes.
