Difficulties in Gathering Information

This law came into force in October 2018. When the law was proposed to the cabinet for approval in February 2018, it was feared that the proposed law contained provisions which would increase the number of cases. The anticipation was based on the experience of the existing Information and Communication Technology Act 2006 (as amended in 2013). The number of cases under the ICT Act was already on the rise. A news report published in September 2016 provided significant clues in this regard. Citing the data from Bangladesh’s only Cyber Tribunal based in Dhaka writes, “The Tribunal began work with three cases in February 2013. But the following year 32 cases came to the tribunal. In 2015, 152 cases came for trial. As of September 15 of that year [2016], 156 cases reached the Tribunal. Besides, 250 cases were under investigation. In other words, a total of 593 cases are pending and under investigation” (Asaduzzaman, ‘Cases of Cyber Crimes Increasingly Exponentially’, Prothom Alo, September 22, 2016). According to Article 19, a total of 71 cases were filed in 2018, 35 cases of which were under the Digital Security Act (The New Age, ‘DSA cases, arrests treble in a year’, January 6, 2021).In 2016, a few more things became clear. First, section 57 of this law is being used the most. A rough translation of Section 57 of the ICT Act says: “If any person deliberately publishes or transmits or causes to be published or transmitted in the website or in any other electronic form any material which is false and obscene and if anyone sees, hears or reads it having regard to all relevant circumstances, its effect is such as to influence the reader to become dishonest or corrupt, or causes to deteriorate or creates possibility to deteriorate law and order, prejudice the image of the state or person or causes to hurt or may hurt religious belief or instigate against any person or organization, then this activity will be regarded as an offence.” And for these offences, anyone can be sentenced to a maximum 14 years and a minimum 7 years of imprisonment. The accused can also be fined Tk1 crore or more. The primary objective of this section was to limit the freedom of expression of the individual. In 2016 alone, of the cases filed under the ICT Act, 94 percent were filed under the controversial section 57. Between 2012 and June 2017, 1417 cases were filed under this law, and about 65 percent of these cases were under section 57. Until section 57 was repealed in 2018, at least 37 cases were filed under section 57.Second, most of the accused in these cases were acquitted. “All the accused have been acquitted in 66 percent of the cases as the allegations have not been proven in court. That means only 34 percent of the cases have been proven. Thirteen percent of the cases have been proven false at the investigation stage.” It was also learnt that “the police had submitted final reports to the court on 46 cases in the last three years as the investigation did not find any truth of the incident.” (Asaduzzaman, ‘Cases of Cyber Crimes Increasingly Exponentially’, Prothom Alo, September 22, 2016).

In 2018, apprehension was that the number of cases would increase if the Digital Security Act were introduced (Ali Riaz, ‘For Whose Interest is the Digital security Act’, Prothom Alo, February 3, 2018). The dire warning came to pass. In September 2020, two years after the law was enacted, the number of cases under the law has risen to more than 1,000 (Asaduzzaman, ‘Digital Security Act: Cases Crossed Thousand in Two Years;, Prothom Alo, September 19, 2020). Data collected by the Center for Governance Studies (CGS) from the police headquarters in March 2021 shows that 126 cases were filed in 2018, 731 in 2019 and 699 as of August 2020. Altogether at least 1559 cases have been filed since the law came into force. According to the Cyber Crimes Tribunal, more than 800 cases were filed in the first nine months of 2020 (January-September 2020).There are discrepancies among the various human rights organizations and media reports about the total number of cases. An article published in the English daily The Financial Express in February 2021 states that there were 630 cases in 2020 (Shahiduzzaman Khan, ‘Strengthening Cyber Security Management, The Financial Express, February 27, 2021). Data from the Ain O Salish Kendra (ASK) shows that, there were 130 cases in 2020 (The New Age, ‘DSA Cases, Arrest Treble in a Year,’ January 6, 2021). These discrepancies are due to the absence of transparency and unwillingness of the law enforcing agencies in providing data.