Journalists held without trial for up to 620 days

Published : Sunday, 3 May, 2026 at 3:50 PM Count : 7

As countries around the globe today celebrate the World Press Freedom Day, five senior journalists remain behind bars for between 593 and 620 days in Bangladesh. None of them have been formally charged since their arrest after the 2024 July uprising.

The deaths of the July protesters they are being held over are real, but the charges they face seem unreal.

Farzana Rupa, Shakil Ahmed, Shyamal Dutta, and Mozammel Haque Babu are accused of murdering Mahfuz Alam Shraban, a 21-year-old BNP activist and pharmaceutical worker killed during the protests in Mirpur on August 5, 2024.

The case filed over Shraban’s death states that protesters passing through the road between Mirpur Complex and Mirpur Model Police Station were attacked by security forces and Awami League activists at 2:30pm -- around the time Sheikh Hasina was fleeing Gonobhaban.

The first information report (FIR) states that Shraban was shot in the left side of his chest, and the bullet exited through his waist. He was declared dead at Dr Azmal Hospital at 3:20pm.

Shraban, the son of a motor mechanic from Naogaon, came to Dhaka to study and took a job as a lab assistant to support his education.

The case, which was filed nine months after Shrabon died, names 408 accused, 25 of them journalists.

The basis for including the journalists appears in a single paragraph of the FIR. Accused numbers 212 to 236 -- the journalists -- are described as practitioners of “yellow journalism” who “broadcast false information through electronic and print media” and “provided provocative statements” that instigated law enforcement to kill. The case does not mention any specific broadcast or statement.

Three witnesses named in the case told that, they had no idea it was filed, nor were they eyewitnesses.

In a separate case, Farzana Rupa and Shakil Ahmed are co-accused alongside former ministers, senior police officers, and AL leaders. The case statement described them collectively as having “aided in the declaration of war against the general public.” The complainant states he identified the journalists among the accused by “interrogating locals.”

Both Rupa and Shakil were taken into remand for 5 days in this case.

Mozammel Haque Babu is also named in the killing of a 19-year-old named Imran Hasan, who was preparing to sit for his secondary school certificate exams when a bullet took his life.

Imran was shot during the Jatrabari massacre around 1:00pm on August 5, when the police descended upon unarmed protesters and hunted them point-blank.

The case filed with the Jatrabari police on September 4, 2024, names 297 people and a further 250 to 300 unnamed accused. Eleven of them are journalists.

The FIR states that the accused, acting “under the direct orders and pre-planned conspiracy” of Sheikh Hasina and the leaders of the 14-party alliance, spread “rumours via online and offline platforms” that led police, Rab, and BGB officers to conduct “indiscriminate firing and physical and mental torture on innocent, unarmed students.”

Babu, a television editor, is among those held responsible for the words of a former prime minister and the bullets of the police force.

Shahriar Kabir is named in a case filed over the death of Md Rafiqul Islam, who was killed during an attack on the crowd on the night of July 18, 2024, in front of Monowara Hospital in Jatrabari.

His wife Narzia filed the case with Jatrabari Police Station five weeks after her husband’s death -- naming Kabir, a 75-year-old journalist and filmmaker, among those responsible.

While the grieving families of these victims seek justice, Farzana Rupa and Shakil Ahmed have been held in pre-trial detention for 619 days, Mozammel Haque Babu and Shyamal Dutta have been inside for 593 days and Shahriar Kabir for 592 days.

Farzana Rupa is accused in nine cases, Shakil Ahmed and Mozammel Babu in eight cases, Shyamal Dutta in six cases, while Shahriar Kabir is accused in at least nine cases, including one at the International Crimes Tribunal.

“There is no hope of bail from the lower courts in these cases…. Any time one of them get bail in a lower court, they are ‘shown arrested’ in another case immediately after,” said Advocate ZI Khan Panna, a senior counsel who is representing Babu, Dutta and Kabir.

Family sources close to Shakil and Rupa said the duo were rejected bail at every turn in the lower courts before reaching the higher courts early last year.

The one-time bail was granted, it was suspended soon after. On January 20, 2025, the High Court granted bail to the couple in a murder case, but just two days later, the Supreme Court’s Appellate Division stayed that order following a petition by the state.

They had to start from the bottom up again -- a year-long process -- before finally securing a date with the High Court for a rule on April 28 this year.

That ruling, however, was postponed to May 11 after the state sought more time to investigate, even though hearings had concluded on April 21.

Three United Nations special experts questioned the interim government about them on March 7, 2025.

“It is notably concerning that journalists have been accused of charges of the utmost seriousness, reportedly including murder and inciting murder, and put under provisional detention without reportedly having had any evidence of their direct participation in such acts presented. We are concerned that the arrest and detention of Rupa and Ahmed may be directly linked to their work as journalists and their exercise of the right to freedom of expression,” said the letter.

The letter was jointly signed by Irene Khan, Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression; Ganna Yudkivska, Vice-Chair of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention; and Margaret Satterthwaite, Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers.

They rejected the presumption that journalism can incite murder -- speech can incite hostility only under very narrow circumstances, the letter noted, and cannot be “conflated with the offences of incitement to murder or murder”.

Meanwhile, after being rejected at the lower courts, Shyamal Dutta sought relief with the High Court.

Eight months after his arrest, the High Court issued a rule asking the government to explain why Dutta should not be granted bail. The state challenged the rule.

His lawyer Panna said that the matter is now before the Appellate Division, where the court has spent the better part of a year deliberating on a single question -- why should he not be granted bail.

Babu’s bail hearing is set for today but his lawyer Panna expects the state to drag it to the Appellate Court Division.

Shahriar Kabir has been taken into remand in five of the nine cases filed against him.

In August 2025, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention flagged the case of Shahriar Kabir to the UN Human Rights Council, arguing that Kabir’s “deprivation of liberty allegedly lacks legal basis”, that his detention is “arbitrary”, and that he is being denied a fair trial.

It stated that Kabir was arrested without a warrant, prevented from accessing legal representation immediately after, and at court, and is being maltreated in custody.

“Kabir has a metal rod in his upper and lower left leg; he thus cannot walk freely and needs a walking stick or a wheelchair. During the court proceedings, Kabir requested permission from the Court to sit on a chair, but the magistrate did not allow him to do so,” said the working group, adding, “The police did not provide Kabir with a wheelchair or allow him to use the elevator.”

The submission noted how Kabir was attacked twice at court, and how it is evident that “police are seen protecting themselves rather than Kabir” as he was “dragged to the second floor of the court building”.

In an interview with a National Daily last week, the UN Special Rapporteur on torture Dr Alice Edwards, said that the cases involving arbitrary detention “clearly require judicial oversight”.

“The police should be non-politicised, and the investigative body should be a professional police force operating to the same standards regardless of which political party a person represents,” she commented.

“What I would really like to see is a recognition that a society cannot be built on cycles of revenge. It must be built on the rule of law, the separation of powers, and human rights -- and all of this will also lead to political stability, peaceful transitions of power, and overall improvement in everyone’s lives.”

FP/MI