Bangabandhu Murder Case
Hearing rolls into third day today
Staff Correspondent
On the second day of the resumed hearing of Bangabandhu murder case at the Appellate Division of Supreme Court (SC) yesterday, the counsel of a convict condemned for death continued reading out the High Court (HC) verdict.On Tuesday, the court resumed the analogous hearing of the leave to appeal petitions of four convicts and the jail appeal of one convict. The five of the 12 convicts condemned to death are in prison. The leave to appeal petitions were filed by convicts Lt Col (retd) Bazlul Huda, Lt Col (retd) Syed Faruk Rahman, Maj (retd) Sultan Shahriar Rashid Khan and Lt Col (retd) Mohiuddin Ahmed after six years of the HC judgment. Another condemned prisoner, Maj (retd) AKM Mohiuddin, also filed an appeal through the jail authorities in June this year following his extradition from the US. In the absence of Lt Col (retd) Bazlul Huda's counsel, advocate-on-record of his leave to appeal petition, Nurul Islam Bhuiya, on Tuesday started to read out the HC judgment pronounced by Justice Mohammad Ruhul Amin. Nurul Islam read out 113 pages of the judgment on the first day of the resumed hearing. He read out another 119 pages from the paper book (history of the case) yesterday. The counsels of the convicts will read out the whole 757-page judgment. They will also read out the 743-page judgment of Justice ABM Khairul Haque after completing Ruhul Amin's judgment. The three-member SC bench headed by Justice Tafazzul Islam with Justice Joynul Abedin and Justice Hassan Ameen began the hearing at 9:35am yesterday. Nurul Islam continued reading out the judgment until the court time ended at 1:00pm. During the reading out of the judgment, the bench judges pointed at some typos in the HC judgment on paper book and asked the counsels to have those corrected. Before ending yesterday's hearing, the judges said they will continue the hearing today. The HC awarded death penalty to 12 former army personnel including the five on April 30, 2001. Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was assassinated along with most of his family members on August 15, 1975. A case was filed on October 2, 1996. A trial court on November 8, 1998, handed down death penalty to 15 retired and dismissed army personnel for the murders. The HC upheld the death sentence of 12 of the condemned. Apart from the five convicts, one died and the rest are still at large. Leave petitions of the four convicts had been pending due to shortage of judges in the SC Appellate Division since August 2001.
| 
