Jail time in Bangladesh BY KHADEMUL ISLAM
Breakfast at the jail
canteen is parathas, egg mamlet and veggie daal. It takes me
back to my university cricketing days, grabbing lunches at the Dhaka Medical
College Hospital (DMCH) canteen across the road from the cricket ground, amid
the scalding black humour of med students fresh in from their cadaver classes.
I, Rahnuma and Rini
have come to the Dhaka Central Jail in Keraniganj to visit photojournalist and
activist Shahidul Alam. He was sent here on 12 August, after a scrambled court
hearing where his legal counsel could not be present. Keraniganj, across the
river Buriganga, is out in the boonies. The jail is a new one, shifted in July
2016 from the old building, a centuries-old, dank, colonial-era structure in
the tightly wound alleyways of old Dhaka. Here, in contrast, is space, air and
empty fields. We buy visitor passes at an open air shed, across from the modern-looking
grey concrete jail complex. A high perimeter wall encloses multistoried
buildings that look like student dorms. They house the inmates. The building
for meeting with the inmates is embedded in the perimeter separated from the
main building; further down are the main gate and the administration block,
with a circular driveway and branded signage. The overall effect is vaguely Low
Rent Corporate, where, unlike the old one, traditional reckonings of sinners
and gallows seem out of place.
Shahidul Alam has been
charged with offences listed in Section 57 of the Information Technology and
Communication Act (ICT) Act 2006 (amended in 2013) relating to dissemination of
‘material’ harmful to public order and the image of the state. I had looked up
the act, curious to know whether arrests could be made without a warrant. And
found that indeed, they could. The original act had specified arrest warrants,
but the 2013 amendment had stripped away that ticklish requirement. Its
origins, like the old jailhouse, lay in the colonial era, in the ‘defamation’
clause of the penal code. To make an arrest the colonial authorities had to
issue an arrest warrant. The emancipatory postcolonial state saw no such need.
When the doors to the
visitors’ building open, the queue outside surges in like sea tide. We too are
swept along. And immediately, my impression of a modernised facility is
shattered. Inside, it stinks; the walls reek of lavatorial damp... read more:
http://himalmag.com/jail-time-in-bangladesh-shahidul-alam-central-jail/
