The High Court on Thursday quashed the long-pending case filed under widely criticised section 57 of the now-repealed Information and Communication Technology Act 2006 against acclaimed photographer and activist Shahidul Alam.
The bench of Justice Mustafa Zaman Islam and Justice Tamanna Rahman Khalidi delivered the verdict after hearing a petition filed in November 2024 by Shahidul Alam seeking dismissal of the case on legal and constitutional grounds.
The case had lingered for nearly seven years, stemming from Shahidul鈥檚 arrest during the student-led road safety protests in July 2018.
On November 27, 2022, the Appellate Division rejected Shahidul Alam鈥檚 appeal, upholding a 2021 High Court verdict that allowed the police to resume its investigation under the now-repealed section 57 of the ICT Act.
The High Court in 2021 ruled that Shahidul鈥檚 writ petition was not maintainable, as a criminal proceeding cannot be quashed through a writ petition.
A group of plainclothes men forcibly picked up Shahidul from his Dhanmondi home in Dhaka at about 10:15pm on August 5, 2028.
He was reportedly blindfolded, dragged into a microbus, and taken to the Detective Branch headquarters on Minto Road in Dhaka.
The photographer鈥檚 family and colleagues immediately tried to file a complaint with the Dhanmondi Police Station, but the then officer-in-charge of the police station refused to register the first information report.
Hours later, at about 12:30am on August 6, 2028, the United News of Bangladesh quoted DB officer Abdel Baki Al Kafi as saying that Shahidul was in DB custody for 鈥榠nterrogation鈥� over Facebook posts, said the petitioner.
The incident raised immediate concerns about enforced disappearance, custodial secrecy, and denial of legal safeguards, drawing strong condemnation from both national and international human rights groups.
Shahidul subsequently spent 108 days in Dhaka Central Jail before being granted bail by the High Court on November 20, 2018.
On November 4, 2024, three months after the ouster of the Awami League regime on August 4, 2024 amid a mass uprising, the High Court stayed the investigation into the case.
The case was filed under the ICT Act鈥檚 section 57, a provision long denounced by rights groups for its vague language and use in silencing dissenting voices.
The section was eventually scrapped and replaced by the Digital Security Act in 2018, which also faced widespread criticism for suppressing the freedom of speech.
Human rights lawyer Sara Hossain argued that under Section 61(2) of the Digital Security Act, only cases that were either filed before or taken into cognizance by the Cyber Tribunal under section 57 of the old ICT Act are allowed to continue.
Since Shahidul鈥檚 case was still under investigation and had not reached the Cyber Tribunal, it does not fall within that scope.
Therefore, she argued, the continuation of the investigation was legally flawed, amounted to an abuse of the legal process, and should be quashed in the interest of justice.
Shahidul was represented by senior lawyer Sara Hossain and lawyer Abdullah Al Noman.
The photographer, accompanied by his wife and fellow activist Rahnuma Ahmed and several other rights advocates, was present in the court.
Sara Hossain later hailed the verdict as a long-overdue acknowledgment of the misuse of repressive laws to target journalists, artists, and dissenting voices.
鈥楾his is not just a legal victory for Shahidul Alam, but a reminder of how laws can be weaponised against fundamental freedoms,鈥� Sara observed.听
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Shahidul Alam
