Two on-duty Rtv journos arrested on charge of 'instigating bomb explosion'

Two on-duty journalists of Rtv were arrested by police allegedly for provoking pro-blockade picketers yesterday into exploding cocktails in the capital's Kamrangirchar.
Kamrangirchar police arrested reporter Tamjid Rony and cameraman Prashanto Modok at Kurar Ghat where they went to cover a pro-blockade rally around 7:30am.
Police produced them before a Dhaka court with a ten-day remand prayer while it granted four days.
Officer-in-Charge Sheikh Mohsin Alam of Kamrangirchar Police Station said the duo were spotted by locals while they were inciting the picketers to explode cocktails.
Then the locals caught them and handed them over to police, he added.
Later, a local shopkeeper, Shah Alam, filed a case against 15 people including the journalists and around 25 unnamed people under the explosive act.
Rtv's Chief News Editor Lutfur Rahman told The Daily Star that they had learned that anti-blockade activists forced Shah Alam to implicate their staff in the case. Police also confiscated their camera, he added.
"They were only doing their duty by taking footage of picketers exploding cocktails. The pro-blockade activists, who blasted the cocktails, ran away soon after the explosion while the anti-blockade activists caught our journalists," said Lutfur.
Terming the arrest as a threat to journalism, Lutfur demanded immediate release of the journalists.