Staff Correspondent:

Jai Jai Din Editor Shafik Rehman has been acquitted in a case over an alleged plot to abduct and murder Sajeeb Wazed Joy, the son of former prime minister Sheikh Hasina. The decision overturns the seven-year jail sentence he was handed in the case.

Dhaka Additional Metropolitan Sessions Cour Judge Tariq Ezaz delivered the verdict on Tuesday, according to Shafik’s lawyer Syed Zainul Abedin Mezbah.

Shafik was in court for the verdict and it was read out in front of him.

Zainul had previously argued at a court hearing: “This so-called case is over a plot to abduct and kill Hasina’s son Joy. The victim did not file the case himself. Police filed it on their own initiative. The defendant is a 90-year-old who was taken into remand. There is no confessional statement in the case.”

“Twelve witnesses testified in the case. The day Joy testified, we saw the judge running after him after recording his testimony. That should tell you what type of trial it has been.”

Besides Jai Jai Din Editor Shafik, Amar Desh Editor Mahmudur Rahman and three others were sentenced to seven years in jail. The others are Mohammad Ullah Mamun, vice-president of pro-BNP organisation Jatiyatabadi Samajik Sangskritik Sangstha, his son Rizve Ahmed Caesar, and Mizanur Rahman Bhuiyan, a businessman living in the US.

Among them, Mahmudur has been acquitted.

Calling the case “false” and a form of “harassment”, Zainul had asked for his client’s acquittal at a hearing on Apr 27.

Additional Public Prosecutor Khalilur Rahman had not objected, saying: “It was a politically motivated case. He [Shafik] is a respected journalist. We have no objection to his acquittal.”

Shafik, a veteran journalist, had spent five months in jail in 2016 after his arrest in the case. He secured bail and left for the United Kingdom in 2018. He returned home on Aug 18, 2024, after the July Uprising, having spent six years abroad.

The government had deferred his sentence by one year on the condition that he surrender to the court and appeal the verdict, which he did on Nov 21 last year.

Following his surrender, the court accepted his appeal and granted him bail on a Tk 5,000 bond.