Just as a citizen has a right to feel aggrieved and seek justice against a genuinely libelous statement so also he or she has the civic right to intellectual freedom and freedom of expression. These rights are only exercisable in relation to undistorted facts or their factual representation, not on any subjective grounds.

As the TV recording of Manzur Elahi's remarks, when repeatedly replayed, showed, Mahmudur Rahman's umbrage was based on non-specific comments by the former. The CPD clarified as much, so did Manzur Elahi which also came to be confirmed by the TV footage.

One would have thought that the matter had been independently verified before taking such an extreme measure against all five citizens who are on the board of trustees of the CPD, each in his own right reputed and honourable person. At least there was no point in suspecting that they wouldn't respect court's summons to explain themselves.

For his part, Mahmudur Rahman is on record having made some extremely caustic remarks. He called the CPD 'shameless, liar and traitors'. The acrid words were supposed to be against the organisation as a whole. But what of his personal invective against CPD Executive Director Debapriya Bhattachariya? He has called him 'kulangar' which translates into 'black sheep'. Such words are extremely abusive in the parlance of a civilised society.

No less flabbergasting is the suggestion that Debapriya has lost his right to citizenship by using the words 'a bad commodity', whereby, in truth, he had only referred to statistics being so and not the country which Mahmudur Rahman likes to think.

Patriotism cannot be anybody's monopoly.