A High Court bench on Tuesday issued an injunction on the publication of Humayun Ahmed’s political fiction ‘Deyal.’
The bench of Justice AHM Shamsuddin Chowdhury and Jahangir Hossain also asked the government and the writer to explain why they should not be directed
to correct a part of the fiction for presenting a ‘distorted’ version of the assassination of the country’s founding president Sheikh Mujibur Rhaman and his minor son sheikh Russell.
The controversial part of the fiction was published by Bangla daily Prothom Alo in its May 11 issue.
Besides Humayun Ahmed, the secretaries of the ministries of education, information and culture were asked to answer the rule in 12 days.
Cancer patient, Humanyun Ahmed, had been undergoing treatment abroad and just came home for a short stay.
The secretaries were directed to help Humanyun Ahmed in correcting the distortion.
The secretaries were also directed to provide to the writer a copy of the Supreme Court’s verdict on Bangabandhu’s assassination.
The court passed the order after attorney general Mahbubey Alam had drawn its attention to the part of the fiction which states that Major Nur Chowdhury fired at and killed Sheikh Mujib and later killed his son Russell, who was hiding behind a closet.
‘This is distortion of history and the records of Bangabandhu murder case according to which Major Bazlul Huda fired several shots at Bangabandhu and killed him, and later he killed   Russell,’ the attorney general told the court.
‘Russell was not hiding. He only wished to go to his mother before he was killed,’ said Mahbubey Alam.
The attorney general said he was hurt by the way the killing of Mujib’s youngest son Sheikh Russel was depicted in two chapters.
He said that the depiction did not properly reflect the terribleness of Sheikh Russell’s killing.
The chapters portrayed Khandker Moshtaque in a manner that he did not know about the killings beforehand. In fact he was involved in the conspiracy, said the attorney general.
He said, ‘If the distortion in the novel is not corrected the new generation would learn wrong history which would be a serious betrayal of history and the nation.’