​​Rights activists Adilur Rahman Khan and ASM Nasir Uddin Elan were freed from jail today, after about a month in prison in a case over spreading disinformation.

They walked out of Dhaka Central Jail around 7:04pm, two hours after the bail order reached the prison authorities, Subhash Kumar Ghosh, Dhaka Central Jail Senior Jail Superintendent (acting) told The Daily Star.

The High Court granted them the bail on October 10, 2023.

Earlier on September 14, 2023, a Dhaka court sentenced Adilur, founder and secretary of the human rights organisation Odhikar, and Elan, a director at Odhikar, to two years imprisonment each in a case under the ICT Act.

Adilur and Elan were convicted for running what the prosecution said was "a distorted report and doctored images" about the May 5-6, 2013, police action on a Hefajat-e-Islam rally in the capital's Motijheel.

"Odhikar never ran such a report. The police filed the case but have not submitted any evidence showing that Odhikar published any such report or list," the organisation's lawyer Ruhul Amin Bhuiyan told The Daily Star earlier.

"They have shown a list of 61 supposedly dead people, which they got in the computers seized by the police from Odhikar office. But this was just a draft document. In fact, the list itself says that the majority of the names are yet to be confirmed [as deceased]," he said.

While arguing on the matter in court on August 24, the lawyer pointed out that the investigation officer only probed eight people out of the 61 to see if they were dead or alive.

Last year, the government cancelled the registration of Odhikar as an NGO, while the case was under trial.

The United Nations Working Group of Enforced and Involuntary Disappearance had written to the government and termed the court case "a smear campaign".