Law affairs adviser Asif Nazrul has hoped that cases related to free speech under the Cyber Security Act will be withdrawn within two weeks, while those marked as ‘fictitious’ lawsuits will be revoked within the month of February.
He made the disclosure while talking to the media at the secretariat in the afternoon on Tuesday.
Asif Nazrul noted that some 322 free-speech cases, initiated during the previous government, were under trial. As the law ministry has scopes to play a role here, some 113 cases have already been withdrawn through public prosecutors.
He hoped that all the remaining cases would be revoked within the next two weeks.
Regarding the ‘fictitious’ cases, the interim government adviser said the authorities have already identified more than 2,500 cases in 25 districts, involving hundreds of thousands of accused.
Initiatives will be taken to revoke those cases within seven days. Some more cases exist in the remaining districts, while further scrutiny is underway in the 25 districts, he said, hoping to complete the entire scrutiny and withdrawal process by February.
According to a Prothom Alo report published on 22 July 2023, Awami League leaders lodged 40 lawsuits in different police stations in the capital in the previous seven months on allegations of attacks that never happened in reality.
As many as 1,701 leaders and activists of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its associated bodies were accused in the cases filed between 17 November 2022 and 30 May 2023. Besides, some 2,575 unnamed people were accused in the cases.
BNP leaders termed those ‘fictitious cases’. That means cases have been filed though the alleged incidents did not take place. The case statements and the sections under which the cases have been filed were almost the same.
A large number of fictitious cases were filed by the police before the parliamentary election in 2018. As many as 697 such cases were filed in Dhaka city alone in three months (September-November) before the election. A total of 578 cases were filed in Dhaka in September alone. Then, the cases filed under the Explosives Act and the Special Powers Act gained familiarity as ‘fictitious cases’.
prothom alo