The filing of cases under the Digital Security Act has continued across the country while the government is yet to develop any mechanism to check misuse of the law despite local and international concerns.

According to critics and victims, the law has been devised to stifle dissent, especially from politicians, journalists and activists, on the digital space.

While the government has admitted that the application of the DSA is being misused in certain cases, it has said — on more occasions than one — that it is in the process of reviewing the law.

Law minister Anisul Huq on Sunday told reporters in the capital that the act was ‘slightly’ misused.

He went on to add that they were in consultation with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, commonly known as the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, regarding the law.

‘We are examining a technical note from it [OHCHR]. Secondly, a procedure has been adopted so that journalists are not being harassed,’ he further said.

He disclosed that they had also initiated a consultation with stakeholders, adding that, after the consultation, if they could solve it with a policy it would be initiated.

‘If the law needs to have any amendment, it will be done,’ he also told the reporters.

In June 2022, the OHCHR, in its technical note, said,  ‘Despite the Government’s stated intentions behind the law, OHCHR has previously expressed its concern at the impact the DSA has had on freedom of expression in Bangladesh, in particular on journalists, academics and human rights defenders.’

The OHCHR proposed changes and modification in the sections 8, 21, 27, 28, 29, 31, 32, 43 and 53 of the Digital Security Act, stating ‘vague and overly broad provisions criminalising various legitimate forms of expression with overly harsh sentences, including life imprisonment for repeat offenders…’

Pointing out that Bangladesh has been a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights since September 6, 2000, the technical note reminded that the country was under obligation to respect and protect the right to freedom of opinion and expression under Article 19 of that treaty.

ICCPR Article 19 (1) guarantees that all individuals ‘shall have the right to hold opinions without interference’ while Article 19 (2) provides that ‘[e]very one shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include the freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.’

Iqhtiar Uddin Azad, 31, then Patnitala upazila correspondent of the Daily Observer and the Rajshahi-based Dainik Sonar Desh, was arrested from his house at Patnitala in Noagoan at about 11:30pm on April 11, 2020 and a case was filed under the DSA by the police at about 6:30pm the following day.

‘I was sent to jail. I languished in jail for eight months and 17 days in the pre-trial stage…It was the corona period and no court hearing was held then,’ Iqhtiar recalled on Saturday.

He was denied bail on as many as 14 occasions and was released on bail on January 1, 2021, which was granted by the High Court in December 2020.

On January 31, 2023, Rajshahi Cyber Tribunal judge Md Ziaur Rahman acquitted him from the charge of spreading false information, tarnishing the image of the state and the government and creating chaos likely to lead to deterioration of law and other.

The law, he also told New Age on Saturday, holds panic among the commoners and stifles freedom of expression.

The law must be reviewed and freedom of expression must be protected, he viewed.

A Rapid Action Battalion team on March 22 arrested Nagoaon government employee Sultana Jasmine. She fell sick and died at the Rajshahi Medical College Hospital on March 24 in RAB custody.

About 38 hours after she was detained, while she was unconscious at the RMCH, Enamul Haque, a joint secretary holding the post of director at the Rajshahi divisional commissioner’s office, filed a case against Jasmine under the DSA at 5:10pm on March 23, accusing her of taking money from job seekers ‘using’ his Facebook account.

The RAB launched an internal inquiry after attaching all the 11 of its officials and rankers involved in her detention and interrogation. The law minister acknowledged that the case against her was a case of abuse of the DSA.

Earlier, after the United States on December 10, 2021 slapped sanctions on the RAB and seven of its current and former leaders, the law minister on several occasions publicly admitted that the act was misused and the government was working with international partners to ensure the best practices.

On May 2022, the minister said that the number of cases under the DSA was decreasing across the country due to government initiatives.

The minister also said that a special cell would be established to examine the prima facie credibility or merit of any information or allegation received by the authorities.

Digital Security Agency officials, however, said in the past week that no such cell was formed yet to examine DSA case contents or to check misuse of the law.

‘No cell has been formed so far,’ Abu Sayed Md Kamruzzaman, director general, Digital Security Agency, told New Age.

Daily Prothom Alo editor and publisher Matiur Rahman was prosecuted and the newspaper’s Savar correspondent Samsuzzaman Shams was sent to jail on Thursday in a case filed under the DSA over a report on high food prices on March 26.

Samsuzzaman was picked up at about 4:00am on Wednesday by a group of plainclothes people, who introduced themselves as Criminal Investigation Department officials, from his rented house in Savar on the outskirts of the capital city of Dhaka.

He was picked up about two hours after a case was lodged under the DSA by an Awami Juba League leader with the Tejgaon police station at about 2:15am.

His whereabouts were unknown for 30 hours until he was produced before a court on Thursday morning.

About the arrest of Samsuzzaman, the law minister claimed that a ‘clip’ mentioned in the case was enough to file the case.

At least 1,178 cases were filed under the DSA in the territory of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police between October 2018 and December 2022.

United Nations Human Rights chief Volker Türk on Friday called on Bangladesh to immediately suspend the application of the act, which was being used across the country to arrest, harass and intimidate journalists and human rights defenders, and to muzzle critical voices online.

He also called for the creation of an independent judicial panel to review all pending cases filed under the act so that those wrongly accused could be released.

The law minister said that he had initiated fresh discussions with stakeholders to ‘review’ the law.

‘If the issue of setting up a cell [concerning the application of the act] comes up in meetings with stakeholders, it will be discussed…,’ said the Digital Security Agency chief.

Researchers and campaigners accused the government of using the DSA as an instrument to silence dissent while the government argued that the law was enacted to fight growing cybercrimes.

Meanwhile, Biman Bangladesh Airlines on March 21 filed a general diary with the Airport police station instead of filing any case under the DSA in connection with a massive cyber attack that affected data, network and communication infrastructure on March 18.

In April 2022, the Centre for Governance Studies, a Bangladeshi non-government organisation, released a report that stated that at least 2,244 individuals were accused in 890 DSA cases between January 2020 and February 2022.

Politicians made up the largest section of the accused, followed by journalists. The report claimed an average of 32 arrests per month under the DSA.