A Dhaka court has awarded death penalty to eight persons, including three siblings, for the murder of Awami League leader and Dhaka’s Lalbagh ward commissioner Hazi Md Alim 18 years back. Judge Md Akhtaruzzaman of the Third Additional Metropolitan Sessions Judge’s Court delivered the verdict on Tuesday. The convicts are Syed Ahmed, Rashid Ahmed, Farid Ahmed, Mohammad Harun, Mohammad Siraj, ‘Shiblu’, ‘Shawkat’ and ‘Kamal’. Of them, Syed, Rashid and Farid are brothers. The court also fined the convicts Tk 50,000 each. All the accused had been out of jail on bail. All the convicts but Shiblu, Shawkat and Kamal were present at the courtroom during the pronouncement of the verdict. The trio was tried in absentia as they have been on the run since the murder. According to the case details, Alim, the commissioner for Dhaka’s Ward No. 62, was chopped and shot dead in the area adjacent to Gore Shaheed Majar and Mosque on February 8 afternoon, 1996 while he was going somewhere on a motorbike. The convicts also shot and hacked Alim’s elder brother Nazim Uddin who was also on the same motorbike. A day after the incident, Alim’s younger brother Hazi Mohammad Badar Uddin filed the case with the Lalbagh Police Station, accusing seven named and five unidentified people. After examining the witnesses and records, the judge pronounced the verdict sentencing eight to death. – bdnews24.com
