BCL’s Badrul gets life in jail

A Sylhet court on Wednesday sentenced former Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL) leader Badrul Alam to life in jail in a case filed for attempt to kill college student Khadija Begum Nargis last year.

Coincidently, the verdict was handed down on International Women's Day.

Sylhet metropolitan sessions judge Akbar Hossain Mridha passed the verdict after recording depositions of a total of 34 witnesses, out of 37, in the case.

Attacker Badrul also confessed to hacking Khadija in his statement made under section 164 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPc) on 5 October last year.

Khadija Begum, 23, daughter of Masuk Miah of Biswanath upazila, was indiscriminately hacked by the then joint general secretary of SUST’s BCL unit Badrul Alam while Khadija was returning home from college on 3 October.

Badrul hacked Khadija allegedly following her refusal to agree to a proposal for having an affair with him.

The brutal incident stirred the entire nation as video footages of the hacking went viral on social media, prompting the ruling Awami League’s student wing BCL to expel Badrul from the party.

She returned home on 24 February after completion of a long medication at the Dhaka's Square Hospital and the Centre for the Rehabilitation of the Paralysed (CRP) at Savar.

The police submitted charge-sheet against the lone accused, Badrul, on 8 November. The court indicted Badrul Alam in the case on 29 November.

On 26 February, Khadija appeared before the court for the first time and made her deposition.

The case was transferred to the metropolitan sessions judge’s court from the chief metropolitan magistrate court as the court lacks the authority to give the highest punishment.