Staff Reporter :
The Supreme Court (SC) on Sunday rejected an appeal to review its death penalty awarded to a man on charge of raping and killing Shazneen Tasneem Rahman at her house in Dhaka in 1998.
A three-member bench of the Appellate Division headed by the Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha
dismissed the petition filed by Shahidul Islam alias Shahid seeking review of a judgment that confirmed his death penalty.
The apex court on August 2 last year upheld the death penalty of Shahidul, a domestic help of the house, but acquitted four others in the case.
Shahidul’s lawyer Barrister Monoj Kumar Bhoumik told the reporters that his client might seek Presidential Clemency after release of the full judgment of the SC.
If the President does not respond to the mercy petition, the jail authorities will execute Shahidul, he said.
On September 2, 2003, a special tribunal sentenced six of the seven accused to death in the case filed for rape and murder of Shazneen in 1998.
One of the accused died in police custody during the probe in the case.
The High Court on July 10, 2006, confirmed the death sentence of the five convicts and acquitted one after the convicts challenged the tribunal’s verdict.
The five later filed appeals with the SC challenging the HC verdict. The SC acquitted four of them and rejected one’s appeal.
The one accused whose appeal was rejected, Shahidul Islam, filed a petition seeking review of the judgment of the SC, which on Sunday rejected his review petition.
