Section 5 of 10

The Big Picture

The project has recorded 1,109 cases ﬁled under the DSA between October 2018 and August 2022. These cases have 2,889 individuals accused, of whom 1,119 persons were arrested. Mushtaq Ahmed, an author and social activist, died while being detained for ten months in February 2021.

The number, while signiﬁcantly large, does not include all the cases ﬁled nor all the people accused. This is because law enforcing agencies decline to provide statistics regarding the cases and the accused. Eﬀorts, even under the Right to Information law, have reached a dead end (see “Unending Nightmare”, pp.11-12). A veil of secrecy has been created around the information of cases and accusations under the DSA since its introduction in October 2018. The data from the cyber-tribunal only reﬂects the cases which have reached their dockets and are in the process of being tried. As such, these numbers represent a small portion.

Most of the cases, we observed, have more than one accused. Many of these arrestees have later secured temporary bail, but some are still lingering in jails as a pretrial detainee. In the absence of information from the government, we do not know how many people are facing this ordeal. The continued detention of the accused is within the purview of the law as 14 sections of the law are non-bailable. In the case of any non-bailable law, the court can grant bail to an accused if it so desires. That is why some of the accused have been granted bail under this Act while many have not. Securing bail is not an easy task. Several cases have shown that the accused’s bail petition has been refused by the court several times. Mushtaq Ahmed was denied bail by the courts at least six times. The increase of cyber-tribunals from one to eight, with one in each administrative division, has neither expedited trials nor helped the accused to get bail quickly.

As for the professions of the accused, we identiﬁed the professional identities of 1,029; among them are politicians, journalists and students who constituted the largest numbers; they were – 301, 280 and 106 respectively. Consequently, people of these professions were arrested in larger numbers; of the 423 arrestees that we could gather information, about 92 were politicians, 84 were journalists and 76 were students. As for the teachers, of the 51 accused, 38 were arrested; 16 of these arrestees were madrassah teachers.

These cases were ﬁled by both the government and individuals. We could identify accusers in 636 cases. Law enforcing agencies and government oﬃcials ﬁled 192 cases, 249 cases were ﬁled by individuals with direct aﬃliations with political parties. Of these politically connected individuals, 198 belonged to the ruling Bangladesh Awami League (BAL), a staggering 80% of all individuals who had political aﬃliations.

In the past four years, the law has been widely used alleging that individuals have defamed the Prime Minister, other ministers and politicians. Our database shows that 140 cases have been ﬁled alleging that the PM has been defamed. In these cases, 210 individuals have been accused and 115 were arrested. Of these 140 cases, 21 were ﬁled by law enforcing agencies, 119 cases have been ﬁled by individuals. Of them, we have been able to identify the political aﬃliations of 64 individuals, all belonged to the ruling Bangladesh Awami League and its associate organizations.

In a similar vein, 64 cases have been ﬁled accusing 130 individuals of defaming various ministers. Of these cases, only four were ﬁled by law enforcing agencies and six by the aggrieved ministers and his or her family members. The remaining 54 cases were ﬁled by those who had no connections to the aggrieved party and who claimed that their feelings had been hurt. At least 51 individuals were arrested of the total 130 accused.

Cases alleging that individuals have defamed politicians have followed a similar pattern. Until August 2022, 168 cases were ﬁled accusing 470 persons. Of these, ﬁve cases were ﬁled by law enforcement agencies, 69 cases were ﬁled by aggrieved politicians, while 94 were ﬁled by his/her supporters. At least 120 individuals were arrested.

In recent years, with growing access to the internet, social media, particularly the use of Facebook, has grown exponentially. It has also become an avenue for expressing discontent against social ills and government policies. It is in the context that the DSA has been used as an instrument to silence contrarian voices. Our data show that 698 cases have been ﬁled against 1489 individuals for posts and comments on Facebook; of these 698 cases, 115 have been ﬁled for hurting religious sentiments, accusing 177 individuals.

Of the 22 sections of the DSA dealing with oﬀenses and penalties, four were the most widely used; they are – 25, 29, 31 and 35. A total of 163 cases were ﬁled under Section 25, where 497 were accused and 112 arrested. Under Section 29, at least 162 cases were ﬁled, 427 accused, and 76 arrested. Under Section 31, at least 105 cases were ﬁled, 256 were accused, 70 were arrested. Under section 35, at least 113 cases were ﬁled, total accused were 518 and 114 arrested.

(A further breakdown of the data and discussions is in Section VII of the report.)