 "Bangladesh High Court upholds death penalty for 20 BUET students in 2019 lynching case")
The High Court on Sunday upheld a trial court’s decision to sentence 20 students from a prestigious university to death for the 2019 murder of a fellow student over his alleged political affiliation.
A two-judge bench comprising Justice AKM Asaduzzaman and Justice Syed Enayet Hossain delivered the verdict after concluding hearings on the mandatory death reference and the convicts’ appeals against the lower court’s judgment.
The convicts, all students of the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), were members of the now-disbanded Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL), the student wing of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League.
They were found guilty of lynching Abrar Fahad, a second-year BUET student in the electrical and electronics department, on October 7, 2019. The attack was triggered by a Facebook post in which Fahad criticised the government.
Fahad’s severely beaten body was discovered in his university dormitory the following morning. Investigations revealed that he had been tortured for nearly six hours with a cricket bat and other blunt objects by 25 fellow students.
Both BUET and the BCL expelled the accused students immediately after the murder.
On December 8, 2021, a Dhaka court sentenced the 20 convicts to death while the Awami League was in power. The High Court’s ruling upholds this decision.
Apart from upholding the death penalty for 20 students, “the court also upheld the life term imprisonment for other five convicts, who too were BUET students,” Attorney General M Asaduzzaman said.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsFahad’s father told reporters after the High Court verdict: “We are satisfied with the High Court’s ruling. However, the verdict must be implemented swiftly.” His brother Faiyaz said, “We did not expect to receive such a swift verdict from the High Court. We are satisfied with this ruling, although there are still many legal procedures remaining.” Defence lawyer Azizur Rahman Dulu said the verdict disappointed him and added: “We will appeal to the Appellate Division, hoping to receive justice there.” The convicts were tried in person but one of the death row inmates in the case, Muntasir Al Jamie, had fled a high-security prison at suburban Kashimur Central Jail last year.
He fled the facility along with 86 other death row convicts, including some militants, on August 6, 2024, a day after the fall of Hasina’s regime in a massive student-led mass protest taking advantage of the chaos.
With inputs from agencies
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