News Desk : dhakamirror.com
Bangladesh’s interim government advisory council, on Thursday, made a policy decision to repeal the controversial Cyber Security Act.
This decision was made at a meeting held at the office of chief adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus in Tejgaon, Dhaka.
After the meeting, environment, forests and climate change adviser Syeda Rizwana Hassan confirmed the matter.
Earlier, on October 3, law adviser Asif Nazrul had said that the Cyber Security Act should be repealed.
Early this week, information adviser Nahid Islam had said that the act would be repealed by one week.
In 2018, the controversial Digital Security Act was enacted during the Awami League regime.
Later, after severe criticism, the Digital Security Act was repealed in 2023 and replaced by the Cyber Security Act. However, there is a lot of controversy and criticism about it. Objections to this law were raised from various levels, including journalists.
On September 30, the law ministry announced in a circular that the government has decided to withdraw the cases related to freedom of expression filed under the CSA.
At the same time, if anyone is arrested in these cases, the person will also be released immediately through the legal process, the ministry also said.
Reportedly, a total of 5,818 cases were ongoing in the eight cyber tribunals of the country till August this year under the Information and Communication Technology Act 2006, Digital Security Act 2018 and Cyber Security Act 2023.
Besides, currently, 1,340 cases related to freedom of expression are ongoing.
Among them, 279 cases are under the ICT Act, 786 under the DSA and 275 under the CSA.
