Govt orders internent blackout during July Uprising, says witness

A key witness testified before the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) on Sunday that the nationwide internet shutdown during the July 2024 anti-discrimination movement was a deliberate government decision, contradicting the former administration's claim that a fire at a data center caused the disruption.

Imdadul Haque Molla, the third prosecution witness in the crimes against humanity case filed against former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's son Sajeeb Wazed Joy and former State Minister for ICT Zunaid Ahmed Palak, gave his testimony before Tribunal-1. 

Joy remains a fugitive while Palak was produced from prison. Charges in the case were framed on January 11.

Identifying himself as a director of Ontimax Communication Limited and former president of the Internet Service Providers Association of Bangladesh from 2023 to May 2025, Imdadul told the tribunal that internet services began experiencing disruptions in some areas from 4 pm on July 18, 2024, the day a fire broke out at the Disaster Management Building in Mohakhali. By 9 pm that night, internet services were completely shut down across the country.

The witness explained that internet service providers operate under two higher tiers in the supply chain. When they contacted the International Internet Gateway operators about the outage, they were informed that bandwidth supply had been cut off from the ICT division level, making it clear that the shutdown was a government decision.

Imdadul testified that on July 23, 2024, then-State Minister Palak visited the Mohakhali Disaster Management Building, where service providers urged him to restore internet connectivity. 

Palak assured them that services would resume that day but told those present that the internet was down because of a fire at the data center.

The witness said this explanation appeared to be a political statement rather than a factual account. He clarified that the fire had occurred at the Disaster Management Building, not at the data center itself. While some fiber optic transmission cables outside the building were damaged in the blaze, the shutdown of a single data center should not have affected nationwide internet services since 15 to 16 other data centers were operational across the country at the time.