A Dhaka court yesterday placed Rabiulla Rabi, news editor of Bangla daily Inqilab, on a five-day remand.

He was arrested during a raid on his office on Tuesday night hours after Praloy Kumar Juarder, acting assistant inspector general (AIG) of police, filed a case under the Information and Communications Technology Act against four journalists of the daily, including Robi, for running a report on its online version.

The other accused are Inqilab editor and publisher AMM Bahauddin, city editor Sakhawat Hossain Badsha and the reporter concerned.

Although the news headlined “A police official enjoying unchallenged authority using the prime minister's name” was published in the print edition on August 18, the case was filed under sections 57(2) and 66(2) of the ICT act for publishing it in the online edition.

According to the act, if the accused are found guilty, they will have to serve 14 years in jail and face a fine of Tk 1 crore.

Praloy in his case statement termed the report a blatant lie, baseless, defamatory, ill-motivated and tantamount to character assassination.

The report was an attempt to hurt his religious sentiment and break the chain of command in police force as it stated that Praloy was creating divisions among senior police officials, he mentioned.

The report falsely accused him of amassing huge amount of money by exercising illegal power in transfer and recruitment in police and sending police personnel to UN peacekeeping missions, alleged Praloy, an assistant superintendent of police and now posted as AIG (Planning and Research) at the police headquarters.

Praloy had earlier served as the protocol officer of the prime minister.

The case was shown to have been filed with Wari Police Station at 8:30pm on Tuesday.

Interestingly, neither the duty officer of the police station nor the additional deputy commissioner of the DMP's Wari division could confirm the filing of the case till 2:30am yesterday.

Deputy Commissioner (Public Relations) of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) Md Masudur Rahman said drive is on to arrest the other accused.

Earlier, police produced Rabiullah Robi before the Cyber Crime Tribunal in Dhaka court and sought a 10-day remand for him.

The defence lawyer argued that Robi was not in charge of the daily's online section and so he should be freed on bail.

The court, however, allowed the police to take him on a five-day remand.

In a reaction, acting chief reporter of the Inqilab Rafique Muhammad said the raid on the Inqilab office and Robi's arrest shows the extent of Praloy's influence in the police force and this supports what was stated in the news report.

It was the second raid on the newspaper house since January 16. In the previous raid, the office was sealed off following the publication of a report, for which the daily later apologised to readers.

Meanwhile, the Detective Branch (DB) of police yesterday seized two computers from the Inqilab office.

A team of around 10 detectives went to the office around 7:30pm and seized the computers.

Earlier, the BNP and its ally Jamaat-e-Islami criticised the government over Robi's arrest, saying the government has begun “indiscriminate and heinous” attacks on journalists before the implementation of the National Broadcast Policy.

In a statement yesterday, BNP acting secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir said the government is repressing journalists as they are revealing various misdeeds and corruption of the government.