Threatening AL MP
HC acquits schoolboy
Orders Tangail court for judicial inquiry
The High Court (HC) yesterday directed the Tangail chief judicial magistrate to conduct a judicial inquiry into the allegation of torture of a schoolboy before he was sent to prison. The HC has also acquitted the Tangail schoolboy Sabbir Shikdar, of the charges of threatening Awami League (AL) MP Anupam Shahjahan. The court has declared as illegal the mobile court verdict that sentenced Shikder to two years in prison on September 18.
The HC has directed the secretaries of public administration and home ministry and the inspector general of police to withdraw Sakhipur upazila nirbahi officer (UNO) Md Rafiqul Islam, also an executive magistrate, and the officer-in-charge of Sakhipur police station, Md Maksudul Alam, from their current posts, and station them outside Dhaka division for fair investigation. A vacation bench of the HC, comprising Justice M Enayetur Rahim and Justice Ashish Ranjan Das, came up with the orders after hearing a suo motu rule issued by it earlier following a newspaper report about the conviction of the schoolboy.
The mobile court reportedly sentenced Shikder, a ninth-grade student, under the Information and Communication Technology Act for threatening AL MP Anupam Shahjahan. The boy is a student at Protima Bonki Public High School in Sakhipur upazila. Shikder appeared before the HC on September 27 following its suo motu rule. He told the HC that he had been tortured by the MP, the police, and the local UNO before being sent to prison.
Plainclothes policemen picked me up from my house around 9pm on September 16 and took me blindfolded to Sakhipur police station, he had told the HC bench of Justice M Enayetur Rahim and Justice Ashish Ranjan Das. Later, they took me to MP Anupam Shahjahans house. He beat me up with a stick. After that, the police took me to the police station and assaulted me, and threatened to kill me in crossfire, he had alleged.
Shikder had also said that after being tortured by Sakhipur OC Maksudul Islam and MP Shahjahan, he was taken to the office of Sakhipur UNO Rafiqul Islam, who kicked him before jailing him for two years. The HC rule was based on a report published in a national daily on September 20. It said that a mobile court, led by executive magistrate Mohammad Rafiqul Islam of Sakhipur upazila in Tangail, had sentenced Shikder to two years in jail on the charge of uploading on Facebook Messenger a threat message to Anupam Shajahan Joy, MP of Tangail-8 (Basail-Sakhipur) constituency. The report had quoted Rafiqul as saying that the Class IX boy had been penalised under the ICT Act after he admitted to having sent a Facebook text to Shajahan. However, Tangail authorities told the HC that Shikder, who is now out on bail, had been penalised for narcotics. SM Rezaul Karim, the lawyer for the UNO, and Nurul Islam Sujon, the lawyer for the OC, told the HC that a mobile court had sentenced Shikder for carrying marijuana. The lawyers also claimed that the newspaper report that prompted the court summons had been published to malign the image of the lawmaker.
