Three arrested for anti-religious blogs in Bangladesh

(April 03, 2013) TBangladesh authorities arrested three bloggers on charges of attacking various religious groups in their writing, police said on Tuesday. Officers arrested Mashiur Rahman Biplab, Rasel Parvez and Subrato Shuvo at their homes in Dhaka on Monday and seized computers and other equipment. They are now investigating whether the three bloggers – one of them a student at Dhaka university – were affiliated with any political parties. “Using several pseudonyms, they attacked Islam, Hinduism, the Prophet Muhammad and the Hindu god Ram through their blogs,” said Mollah Nazrul Islam, deputy commissioner of the Dhaka metropolitan police. He said “Their writings have violated the 2006 Information and Communications Act. If found guilty, they will face 10 years in jail and a 10 million taka (US$125,000) fine.”
Monday’s arrests come ahead of a planned protest in Dhaka on Saturday by a fundamentalist Islamic group demanding the punishment of atheist bloggers and calling on the government to legislate a law against blasphemy. Several other Islamic groups have threatened to protest if the atheist bloggers are not prosecuted.