Police recently submitted a charge sheet with the court claiming that photojournalist Shafiqul Islam Kajol’s main purpose was to tarnish the images of ruling party leaders and activists and extort money by uploading fake information.
After around one-year-long probe, Sub-Inspector Mohammad Russell Mollah of Detective Branch of police, the investigation officer, filed the charge sheet with the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate’s Court of Dhaka on March 14.
This was the second charge sheet to be filed against Kajol, who is accused in three cases under the Digital Security Act, all of which were filed by ruling party members.
They had filed the cases with Kamrangirchar, Hazaribagh, and Sher-e-Bangla police stations. The charge sheet submitted yesterday was that of the case filed with Kamrangirchar police station, while the charge sheet of the case lodged with the Hazaribagh station was given on February 4.
The charge sheet stated that Kajol published fake news on his Facebook account regarding the arrest and alleged crimes of expelled Jubo Mahila League leader Shamima Nur Papia.
It said that at the time when Kajol circulated false information on his Facebook, Jubo Mahila League leader Shamima Nur Papia was arrested, expelled, and the district Jubo Mahila League committee was dissolved.
The charge sheet alleged that Kajol made a Facebook post, saying that Sumaiya Chowdhury Bonya was one of Papia’s accomplices “in her illegal business of women and drugs”.
Following the post, Bonya, a member of the central committee of Bangladesh Jubo Mahila League, a body of the ruling Awami League, lodged the case with Kamrangirchar Police Station on March 11 last year.
He sent vulgar texts and pornography to various Facebook IDs, the charge sheet alleged.
Kajol also uploaded indecent, defamatory, and objectionable information about the complainant’s husband Asaduzzaman Nahid, the investigation officer claimed in the charge sheet.
The photojournalist was also charged with uploading indecent, defamatory, objectionable, and fake information about Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan, AL General Secretary and Road Transport and Bridges Minister Obaidul Quader and several other ministers, AL leaders, lawmaker Amir Hossain Amu, other lawmakers, Jubo Mahila League President Nazma Akhter, its General Secretary Apu Ukil, and several other female leaders and activists.
Kajol faced 53 days of enforced disappearance and spent seven months in prison. He had disappeared on March 10 that year and was “found” by the Border Guard Bangladesh roaming around the Benapole border after 53 days of his enforced disappearance.
He then landed in jail in a case lodged under the DSA by lawmaker Saifuzzaman Shikhor and two Jubo Mahila League activists over a Facebook post.
The lower court concerned kept denying him bail for seven months until the High Court on November 24 granted him bail in one case and ordered the investigation officer and the Cyber Tribunal to submit reports in two other cases.
Finally, the HC on December 17 granted him bail in two other cases after Kajol’s lawyer pointed out that the probes had to be concluded within 75 days of filing of the cases, and the investigators had failed to do so.
However, investigators are yet to submit the probe report in another case filed against Kajol with Sher-e-Bangla Nagar Police Station recorded under the DSA in March last year.
