139 get death penalty, 185 life term, Torab Ali, 44 others acquitted

The High Court on Monday upheld death penalty for 139 and commuted death penalty to life term for eight in the much-talked about BDR mutiny case.

The HC 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 ruling Bangladesh Awami League (AL) local leader Torab Ali, were acquitted.

A three-member HC special bench led by justice M Shawkat Hossain also sentenced 37 more to life term and 196 to different terms.

The HC acquitted a total of 45 convicts, including Torab Ali, who had been sentenced to different terms.

The other two members of the bench are justice Md Abu Zafar Siddique and justice Md Nazrul Islam Talukder.

The HC bench had started reading out the verdict of about 10,000 pages on Sunday, but could not complete and resumed reading it out today and pronounced the verdict this afternoon.

Earlier on 3 April, the HC bench kept the verdict as Curia Advisari Vult (CAV) after concluding the hearing on the appeals and the death references. 

A Dhaka court on 5 November 2013 sentenced 152 BDR members of the erstwhile Bangladesh Rifles and two civilians to death, and 161 others to life imprisonment for their involvement in the BDR mutiny.

A total of 257 appeals were filed with the High Court against the lower court verdict. Seventy four people, including 57 army officials, were killed in the BDR mutiny on 25-26 February in 2009 at the Pilkhana headquarters in Dhaka.

The paramilitary force was later renamed Border Guard Bangladesh aka BGB.