Yet another journalist has fallen victim to the dragnet of the Digital Security Act (DSA). Yet another blatant misuse of the law, in the name of law, is playing out in a wearily familiar fashion. This time the victim is Tanvir Hasan Tanu, a Thakurgaon-based journalist with Jagonews24.com who moonlights as a district correspondent for two other news outlets. According to The Daily Star, a case under the DSA was recently filed against Tanu and two other journalists after the former’s report on alleged food-related irregularities in Thakurgaon Sadar Hospital riled the hospital authorities. The authorities claimed that Tanu had used “false information” in his report with the intent to “deteriorate law and order” and “tarnish the image of the hospital and its staffers”. Police arrested him on Saturday night, and after he fell sick in custody, took him to hospital. An image that later surfaced shows one of Tanu’s hands cuffed with the metal headboard of the hospital bed so that he—who reported to the police station of his own accord—could not escape! Later, a Thakurgaon court granted him bail considering his illness.

Note that Tanu was granted bail on medical grounds, not released for lack of merit in the case filed against him. Although the police headquarters have assured us that action will be taken if there is any complaint of “deviations” in the enforcement of the law against Tanu, this doesn’t address our concern that a DSA case was filed and accepted for the flimsiest of reasons imaginable, and against a journalist who was only performing his professional duty. Tanu is but the latest in a long line of victims of the DSA—In 2020, as many as 457 people of all professions were prosecuted and arrested in 198 cases filed under the DSA, according to the UK-based Article 19. Of them, 75 were journalists.

The dizzying manner in which such cases are being filed against conscientious citizens of the land is really disturbing. Equally worrying is how, despite countless allegations of its misuse, the government continues to blatantly ignore calls for repealing the law. One wonders how many more victims will be needed before the government will be convinced that the problem lies in the very framing of this law. The danger of having the DSA around, and its continued misapplication, is the creation of an environment in which even genuine grievances become secondary to perceived threats to one’s image. This affects not just journalists, but also the general public who have the right to know vital, life-saving information in these trying times.

For too long, we have had to bear with the DSA as well as complicit silence or scandalous justification of the law by those in charge. It’s time the authorities ceased punishing people for exercising their constitutionally guaranteed rights to freedom of expression. We urge the authorities to withdraw the cases against journalist Tanvir Hasan Tanu and his colleagues and all other victims of the DSA, and instead take action against those using the law to dodge accountability for their actions or failure to perform their duties.