News Desk : dhakamirror.com
A Dhaka tribunal has sentenced Tithy Sarker, a suspended student of Jagannath University, to five years imprisonment in a DSA case filed for making derogatory comments about religion on Facebook.
However, it has granted her a year-long probation on eight conditions, including regular care for her aged father, following traffic rules, not harming the environment, and more, said Mamun Sikder, stenographer of the tribunal.
This means Tithy will not have to be in jail for this one year and her behaviour during the probation period will determine if her sentence will be reconsidered.
According to section-5 of the Probation of Offenders Ordinance, 1960, a court may, for reasons to be recorded in writing, instead of sentencing the person at once, make a probation order, that is to say, an order requiring him or her to be under the supervision of a probation officer for such period, not being less than one year or more than three years.
Judge AM Julfiker Hayet of Dhaka’s Cyber Tribunal yesterday delivered the verdict in Tithy’s presence at the courtroom.
Her elderly aunt Sheba Dasi Sarker, among others, accompanied her to the court.
“Tithy has been living with us since her sister got married. Her father has become mentally disturbed due to the incident while her husband left her because of it.”
Tithy’s lawyer Babulur Rahman said, “My client [Tithy] was granted probation considering her studentship and other circumstances. She confessed, pleaded and said she would not do such a thing again…. She wants to return to her normal life.”
During the trial, six prosecution witnesses testified in the case.
On October 23, 2020, screenshots of Tithy’s posts and comments “hurting people’s religious sentiments” went viral on Facebook.
The same day, she filed a general diary with Pallabi Police Station, claiming that her Facebook profile was hacked.
However, her posts and comments triggered protests at the university and students demanded her punishment.
Tithy was consequently suspended from her post as the office secretary of JnU Bangladesh Chhatra Odhikar Parishad that same day. She was also suspended from the university.
On October 25, 2020, her family told journalists that she “went missing” in the morning, after leaving home to go to the police station.
Two days later, her elder sister Srity Rani Sarker filed a missing person’s report with Pallabi Police Station.
On November 11, 2020, police arrested Tithy from Narsingdi’s Madhabdi area and her husband Shiplu Mallik from Kaptan Bazar in Dhaka.
The next day, the Criminal Investigation Department of police said she had faked her own abduction to divert attention from the allegations against her.
“After leaving her Pallabi home on October 25, Tithy contacted Shiplu and went to Bagerhat, where they got married. They came back to Dhaka on November 9. Tithy later went to her in-laws’ house in Narsingdi,” Deputy Inspector General Jamil Ahmed told a press conference at the CID office in the capital’s Malibagh.
On November 14, 2020, the couple was shown arrested in a case filed on November 2 by police under the Digital Security Act with Paltan Police Station.
On May 19, 2021, Investigation Officer Mehedi Hasan, also a sub-inspector of the CID, pressed charges against the two.
On November 4, 2021, the tribunal framed charges against Tithy and discharged Shiplu after scrutinising the case documents and other relevant materials.
On August 7, 2022, Tithy secured bail around 21 months of her arrest.
– Input from The Daily Star was used in this article.
