3 get life sentence in Commodore Rabbani killing case

The High Court today sentenced three people to life imprisonment for killing Commodore Ghulam Rabbani, an aide-de-camp (ADC) of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, in 2004.

Delivering a short verdict on separate appeals, it ordered the trial court to retry an accused in connection with this murder case, and acquitted another one of the charges.

The three convicts, who got life imprisonment yesterday are -- former general manager of Korean Export Processing Zone (KEPZ) Abu Naser Chowdhury and former chief security officer Humayun Kabir Chowdhury, and one Md Selim.

Abu Naser and Humayun Kabir were handed down five years’ imprisonment in this case by a Chittagong court in April, 2005.

The trial court had sentenced Selim to life imprisonment, which was affirmed by the HC yesterday.

The HC ordered the trio (Naser, Humayun and Selim) to surrender to the lower court in connection with the case within six weeks after receiving its verdict.

It also fined each of three convicts Tk 50,000, and said they will have to suffer five years in jail if they fail to pay the fine. 

The HC sent the case proceedings against Md Saiful Islam alias Bilai Saiful to the trial court for retrial. The lower court had acquitted Saiful of the charges.

The HC also asked the lower court to deliver a fresh judgment in the case against Saiful after retrial in the light of its observations.

Saiful will have to surrender to the lower court during the retrial of the case against him, it said.

The HC bench of Justice M Enayetur Rahim and Justice Akram Hossain Chowdhury said that they will make the observations in the full text of the judgment later on.

The bench, however, acquitted another Abdul Malik Sohel from the murder charge.

The lower court had given life term imprisonment to Sohel in this case. 

The convicts are now on bail.

Attorney General Mahbubey Alam told The Daily Star that he would have been happy, if the convicts would have been given death sentence.

He said the government will decide whether it will file an appeal with the Supreme Court seeking death sentence for the accused after getting the full text of the HC verdict.

Md Munsurul Hoque Chowdhury, one of the defence lawyers, said his clients will decide about filing an appeal with the SC against the HC verdict. 

Ghulam Rabbani, the then managing director of KEPZ and a vital prosecution witness on both the historic Bangabandhu murder case and jail killing case, was gunned down in Chittagong in April, 2004.

A gang of armed criminals shot Rabbani — also former chairman of Chittagong Port Authority (CPA), and former director general of the Department of Shipping — in his throat by intercepting his microbus at Muradpur in Chittagong when he was going to the KEPZ on April 11, 2004.

AKM Emtajul Islam, former site engineer of the KEPZ, filed an attempt to murder case with Panchlaish Police Station on the same night.

Rabbani succumbed to his injuries at Bumrungrad Hospital in Bangkok on April 24, 2004, 13 days after the shooting. The case was then turned into a murder case.

The convicts in 2005 filed appeals against the verdict with the HC challenging the lower court verdict. The government filed two revision appeals with the HC in 2005 praying highest punishment for the accused.