BDR carnage: HC upholds death penalty for 139

Staff Correspondent: The High Court (HC) has upheld death penalty for 139 persons including Deputy Assistant Director (DAD) Tauhid for their involvement in BDR mutiny in Dhaka's Pilkhana.

A three member-member bench of Justice Md Shawkat Hossain, Justice M Abu Zafor Siddique and Justice Md. Nazrul Islam Talukder passed the order on Monday.

The court also acquitted four who had got death penalty and upheld life term for 146 out of the 160 who had been awarded life term by the trial court.

Of the 160 who got life term, the remaining 12, including Awami League (AL) local leader Torab Ali, were acquitted.

Earlier, the HC bench had started reading out the verdict on Sunday, but could not complete and resumed reading it out today and pronounced the verdict this afternoon.

On April 13, the HC bench kept the case waiting for verdict after hearing arguments on the death reference and appeals in the case for 370 days.

The death reference and the appeals were filed with the HC months after a Dhaka court announced the verdict on November 5, 2013.

The trial court sentenced 150 BDR soldiers and two civilians to death and jailed 160 others for life for their roles and involvement in the massacre.

It also handed down rigorous imprisonment to 256 people, mostly BDR soldiers. The court acquitted the remaining 277 accused, but the government later appealed against acquittal of 69 of them.

Seventy-four people, including 57 army officials, were killed during the BDR (Bangladesh Rifles) mutiny on February 25-26 in 2009 at the Pilkhana headquarters of the paramilitary force, later renamed Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB).


risingbd/Dhaka/Nov 27, 2017/Mehedi/Nasim