It has been more than seven months1 since Shahriar Kabir, an eminent writer, journalist, filmmaker and intellectual of Bangladesh, was arrested by the unconstitutional interim Government2 led by Dr. Muhammad Yunus on false allegations. Unlike him, during this despicable Yunus regime, many journalists, writers and political-cultural activists are either behind bars, indicted on false accusations or flying the coop3. In the last seven months of 75-year-old Shahriar Kabir's imprisonment, he, who cannot move without a wheelchair, has faced grim conditions as Yunus's phoney Government shows a complete lack of rule of law, resembling the law of the jungle. Futility in case filing, multiple impertinent remands, hare-brained judicial process, and naked violation of the Prisons Act of Bangladesh are pointed out. Significantly, the Yunus Government is going ape to hinder the basic treatment process of Shahriar Kabir, which is considered a fundamental responsibility of the state according to the de jure constitution of Bangladesh. Even after the second cardiac arrest of
Shahriar Kabir in jail4, the Yunus Government fiddled with the treatment. The corporate media has not reported, editorialised, post-editorialised, or discussed Shahriar Kabir's sufferings in newspapers or on talk shows, and there is no patina of so-called intellectuals' or human rights organisations' statements. Only social media activists, secular bloggers, and a single news portal, BD Digest, have broken Yunus's iron curtain against the media5 to crack the news and are up in arms about the megalomaniac Yunus administration. Shahriar Kabir, a freedom fighter in Bangladesh's Liberation War in 1971, dedicated his life to promoting and preserving the spirit of Bangladesh's liberation movement. He has been dry behind his ears for five decades of Bengali children's literature6. Being a nonpareil storyteller, his hearkening back to the wartime memoir and the bedrock of 1971 and writing in pellucid prose for young minds becomes the panacea for all communal and compromised ills. In his novels and short stories written for children, the fastidious…
