Policemen assaulted three on-duty photojournalists, hurled expletives at them and took away their cameras at Sher-e-Bangla Nagar in Dhaka yesterday.
Injured Prothom Alo photojournalists Khaled Sarkar, Sajid Hossain and Zahidul Karim were rushed to Pangu Hospital in the capital.
Dhaka Metropolitan Police suspended nine policemen in this connection and closed Assistant Commissioner of Tejgaon Division Shahidul Islam to DMP headquarters.
The policemen swooped on the photojournalists while they were taking shots of a demonstration staged by the students of Dhaka Women Polytechnic Institute around 1:00pm.
Lying on his hospital bed, injured Zahidul Karim said, “When the agitating students were returning to their campus after removing the road blockade, I followed them.
“When I went to the other side of the road on my motorbike, Assistant Commissioner Shahidul Islam asked me why I had travelled in the wrong direction on the street. I answered that I had gone on the wrong side to take photos,” he said.
Zahidul said AC Shahidul then started yelling filthy words and said he had seen many journalists and had beaten them up too.
“When Sajid [Sajid Hossain, photojournalist and co-worker of Zahidul] asked Shahidul not to use foul language, he got angry and ordered his subordinates to beat us up. The policemen then started punching and beating Sajid and also took away his camera. At one stage, Sajid fell on the ground,” Zahidul said, adding, “As I went forward to get him out of there, they assaulted me too. When Khaled [Khaled Sarkar, photojournalist and co-worker of Zahidul] went to the spot, he was attacked as well.”
Zahidul said the AC then ordered the policemen to take all three of them to Sher-e-Bangla Nagar Police Station.
“They took us to the police station in a pick-up truck but the beating continued throughout the journey,” Zahidul said. He added, “After we reached the police station, they took away our cameras and mobile phones.”
Later, a reporter of their newspaper went to the police station and rescued the photojournalists with the help of Officer-in-Charge Zakir Hossain Mollah and rushed them to the hospital.
Later in the day, AC Shahidul Islam clearly made a caricature of himself when he talked to a journalist over the telephone and told him, “The journalists might have been injured during a scuffle among themselves.”
The journalist Shahidul talked to had taped the conversation; and the photos taken by two photojournalists before they were assaulted left no room for doubt as to how the photographers had been hurt.
On the telephone, Shahidul claimed that the photojournalists had first pinned down a sub-inspector to the ground following a heated exchange of words.
He reiterated that police did not beat up any journalists.
Apart from closing AC Shahidul, the DMP authorities suspended a sub-inspector, two assistant sub-inspectors and six constables in connection with the assault on the lens men, Additional Deputy Commissioner Masudur Rahman, in-charge of Media and Community Service of DMP, told The Daily Star.
The suspended policemen were SI Zahurul Islam, ASIs Mohammad Shafiuddin and Nazmul Huda and constables Motiur Rahman, Abdur Razzaq, Mohammad Shajahan, Joynal Abedin, Ratan Kumer and Jahangir Alam.
Jahangir was the bodyguard of AC Shahidul Islam, said SI Abu Zafar of Sher-e-Bangla Nagar Police Station.
Masudur said the DMP formed a one-member committee with Joint Police Commissioner Sahabuddin Koreshi to probe the incident.
Imam Hossain, deputy commissioner of Tejgaon Division, said the DMP had closed the AC and suspended the others after journalists called them and informed them of the incident.
Meanwhile, officials of Sher-e-Bangla Nagar Police Station refused to record a case in this connection.
Nasirul Islam, a staff photographer of bdnews24.com, said, “I along with many other journalists went to the police station in the afternoon to file a case on behalf of Sajid, Khaled and Zahidul. But SI Abu Zafar on duty refused to record the case and said he would not record the case without his superior’s nod.”
Several organisations yesterday condemned the police assault on the journalists.
Diplomatic Correspondents Association Bangladesh President Rezaul Karim Lotus and General Secretary Bashir Ahmed condemned the police attack on the three photojournalists.
They demanded proper investigation into the incident and exemplary punishment of the guilty. They urged the authorities concerned to ensure that such incidents never happened again.
The International Crime Reporters’ Society urged the law and order monitoring section of the country to ensure the proper investigation and not to harass the media activist in such indecent way.
A group of photojournalists yesterday announced they would stage a demonstration before the Jatiya Press Club at 11:00am today to protest the incident.
Jahangirnagar University Journalists’ Association and Human Environment Rights Society also issued media statements protesting the incident.
Source : ICRS Press Briefing & The daily Star, Bangladesh
