'Seven months he has been in jail for no reason.'
Durlav Roy Chowdhury, a photographer from Salkia in West Bengal's Howrah district, has been in a jail in Nepal for the last seven months.
The 24 year old entered Nepal via the Kakarbhitta entry point in Bengal. He was arrested at Chandrargadi airport in Nepal's Jhapa district on November 18, 2021 before he boarded a Buddha Air flight to Kathmandu.
During the security check before boarding the flight, airport security say they discovered that Roy Chowdhury was carrying 226 photocopies of 100 dollar notes.
Roy Chowdhury told the police he had come to shoot a short film Money Is Nothing to stream on YouTube and was carrying the photocopies in that connection.
He was taken to the Jhapa district court which sent him to the Jhapa district jail. He was charged with carrying 'fake foreign currency'.
Nepal's National Forum of Photojournalists Chairman Pradeep Raj Onta traveled to Jhapa and met Roy Chowdhury in jail.
After the meeting Onta issued a press release saying that Roy Chowdhury was a travel blogger and his Facebook, Instagram and YouTube accounts proved that he is a wonderful travel photographer.
"Durlav printed the notes from Google Images. He is innocent," Onta told Rediff.com's A Ganesh Nadar on the phone from Kathmandu. "He was going to use those images for his movie Money Is Nothing. Those were dummy notes, not fake currency."
"My son has been a freelance photographer for four years. He gives photos to news organisations like National Geographic and he also has a YouTube channel," Tripti Roy Chowdhury, Durlav's mother, told Rediff.com on the phone from her home in Bengal.
"He has been to Nepal twice before and nothing like this has happened. He didn't make much money as a photographer, but he liked his profession," Durlav's mother adds. "We have appointed a lawyer in Kathmandu. The lawyer told us he would be released, but did not tell us when."
"What Durlav was carrying was dummy dollar notes printed on photo paper; it is the police who are saying 'fake currency'," Rahul Barua, secretary general, South Asia Foundation-Nepal, tells Rediff.com.
"I think there must have been some miscommunication at the airport when he was arrested because of language issues. I have met him twice in Jhapa jail. He is innocent," adds Barua.
"With great difficulty we got a hearing in court. We had hired local lawyers. The police produced three witnesses and one of their witnesses turned hostile," says Barua. "Our lawyers explained that these are dummy notes on photo film paper. Even children play with them."
The next hearing is on Tuesday, June 14, 2022.
"Seven months he has been in jail for no reason," says Barua. "He is innocent, but that is a different country with a different legal system."
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com
