In the case of the 2001 bomb attack during the Bengali New Year celebrations at Ramna Batamul in Dhaka, the High Court has sentenced two individuals to life imprisonment and nine others to 10 years of rigorous imprisonment each.
The verdict was delivered on Tuesday, May 13, by a High Court bench comprising Justice Mostafa Zaman Islam and Justice Nasreen Akhter. The court dismissed the state’s plea to uphold the death sentences previously issued and accepted the appeals of the convicts, issuing a revised judgment.
Earlier, on June 23, 2014, Dhaka’s Speedy Trial Tribunal had sentenced eight individuals to death and six others to life imprisonment in the same case.
Among those initially sentenced to death was HuJI leader Mufti Hannan, who was also convicted in the 2004 grenade attack on former British High Commissioner Anwar Choudhury. He was executed on April 12, 2017. The tribunal had sentenced him to death in the Ramna bombing case as well.
Additionally, two convicts who had received life sentences — Abdur Rauf and Yahia — died before their appeals could be heard by the High Court. Their names have been dropped from the case accordingly.
