Tuesday 9 November 2010

Hearing on Jail Killing Case adjourned till Dec 6

Dhaka, Nov 9 (UNB)

The long pending leave-to-appeal hearing against the impugned High Court verdict in the Jail Killing Case was on November 9 adjourned halfway through, as the Attorney General could not satisfy the Appellate Division with proper argument for retrial of the case.

A 3-member Appellate Bench, headed by Chief Justice ABM Khairul Haque, adjourned the hearing until December 6, asking Attorney General Mahbubey Alam to come up with irrefutable evidence for making out his plea.

Passing the order, the apex court also asked Anisul Huq, specially appointed State counsel for the case, to submit documentary evidence and records as to how the trial in the Jail Killing Case was influenced by the then party in power pushing it into injustice.

On August 28 in 2008, during the army-backed caretaker government, a High Court division bench acquitted four ex-army officers in the Jail Killing Case, while it confirmed the trial court death sentence against Risaldar Moslemuddin, one of the three condemned fugitives.

On October 20 in 2004, during the BNP-Jamaat alliance government, the trial court, acquitted four politicians - KM Obaidur Rahman, Shah Moazzem Hossain and Nurul Islam Manjur of BNP and Taheruddin Thakur - and Maj (retd) Khairuzzaman while it sentenced three army men to death and awarded life imprisonment to 12 others.

Three and half decades ago, on November 3 in 1975, four national leaders - Syed Nazrul Islam, Tajuddin Ahmed, M Mansur Ali and AHM Qamaruzzaman - were gunned down inside the Dhaka Central Jail by a cabal of army officers.

The jail killings were seen as a desperate bid by power usurpers amid a political vortex, 79 days after the assassination of country’s founding father Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and most members of his family on August 15.

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