A Chattogram court has sentenced a schoolteacher to eight years in jail for 'hurting religious sentiments' with comments he made about Islam on social media five years ago.
Chattogram's Cyber Tribunal Judge Md Zahirul Kabir delivered the verdict on Tuesday in the case under the Information and Communication Technology Act, 2006.
The convict, Debabrata Das Debu, was an assistant teacher at the Chowmuhani High School in Noakhali's Hatia.
He has aldo been fined Tk 20,000 or to face an additional six-month jail term.
According to the case statement, Debabrata made some comments about Islam on Facebook on October 15 and 28, 2017. He was later confronted by a group of people outside the school for 'disparaging' the religion on Oct 31.
Police then arrested him and started a case under the ICT Act, the predecessor of the Digital Security Act.
The charges against him were framed by a cyber tribunal in Dhaka on Jun 10, 2018.
The case was then transferred to the Chattogram Divisional Cyber Tribunal for trial.
