Kazi and Ullash, both minors and secondary school students, were subjected to a blasphemy accusation campaign by an Islamist student organization. As a result, they were dragged into a mosque, beaten by a mob, and then jailed.
Kazi Mahbubur Rahman Raihan (known by the nickname Rahi) and Ullash Das were students attending Chittagong College in Bangladesh when they were accused of blasphemy in March 2014. They had been active bloggers, and they had allegedly posted “derogatory comments against Islam and the Prophet Mohammad” on Facebook. The two were on campus when a mob of Islamist student organization members assaulted him, taking them to a mosque and then dragging them “into the street” as they beat them.
“As far as we have seen, neither of them wrote any kind of public writing that goes against anyone’s religious belief.” - Abu Bakar Siddique Azim, the students’ lawyer
Although police stopped the incident, they shortly arrested Rahi and Ullash, and the two were soon thrown into jail under the Information and Communications Technology Act, which prohibits the transmission of “fake, obscene or defaming information in electronic form.”
“They [the Islamists] prepared and distributed a leaflet of 5-6 pages. The first comment highlighted in that leaflet was enough to shock any person, maybe more than that ... [Rahi and Ullas] were first taken to Tek Mosque and were beaten mercilessly and later they were dragged to the street. Some others joined the mob in the street. [The Islamists] started distributing the pre-printed leaflet to the crowd.” - Sumit Chowdhury, blogger
Fellow bloggers maintained that the two had been the victims of a propaganda campaign. Many alleged that the aforementioned student organization had been distributing propaganda pamphlets attributing false quotations to the two. They allege, in fact, that the whole incident was retaliation for their online writings against Jamaat-e-Islami, Bangladesh’s largest Islamist political party (of which this organization was the student wing).
Two bloggers sent to jail - Dhaka Tribune
Teenage Bloggers in Bangladesh Arrested For ‘Blasphemous’ Facebook Posts - Global Voices Advox
Blasphemy law in Bangladesh allows the state to arrest, trial and imprison any person who has intention of hurting "religious sentiments." While the state does not have any law against apostasy, vigilantism or non-state groups prosecute apostates on their own. Vigilante violence has been an especially acute issue, most notably in the mid-2010s when a string of secularist and atheist bloggers suffered murder and attempted murder at the hands of Islamist extremists.