July-August protesters won’t face cases: home ministry

The Ministry of Home Affairs said today that no cases can be filed against students and people who actively participated in the mass upsurge in July-August.
It has reiterated its position that students and the general public will not be arrested or harassed for the events of the mass upsurge.
A notification was issued by the ministry in this regard, signed by Faisal Hasan, senior information officer of the ministry.
According to the notification, a new journey has begun towards building a discrimination-free new Bangladesh through the fall of the autocratic fascist government in the mass upsurge of students and people on August 5.
“The students and people who actively worked for the movement from the field to make this mass upsurge successful will not be arrested or harassed or any cases will not be filed against them for the incidents related to the uprising from July 15 to August 8,” reads the notification.
“The people concerned have been instructed to remain alert in this regard. They were also warned against providing any benefit by providing false information in this regard,” the ministry notification added.
Police have already dropped charges of committing violence and cybercrimes against all the accused in around 650 cases countrywide, according to officials at the Police Headquarters.
Several top BNP and Jamaat leaders were among the accused. Most of these cases were filed between July 17 and August 5 during the quota reform movement.
Investigators of these cases submitted the final reports to different courts, requesting that the accused be relieved of the charges, officials said.
But for murder cases, police have been instructed to remain alert so that no innocent people face harassment. However, since murders have taken place, the investigating officers need to analyse and investigate why those crimes were committed and who were behind those.
If the name of any accused was not included in the first information report, then the name should be included following an investigation, PHQ officials said.