2 get life term, other convicts to 10-year imprisonment in Ramna Batamul attack case

The High Court on Tuesday sentenced condemned convicts Maulana Mohammad Tajuddin and Shahadat Ullah to life term imprisonment in the case lodged over the 2001 Ramna Batamul bomb attack.

Meanwhile, the court commuted the sentences of the least nine convicts to 10-year imprisonment and fined Tk 50,000 each.

The order was issued by Justice Mustafa Zaman Islam and Justice Nasreen Akter.

On April 14 in 2001, two bombs went off during 1408 Pahela Baishakh celebrations organised by Chhayanaut at the capital’s Ramna Batamul.

The bomb blasts, which shook the nation, left 10 people dead and several others injured.

Police, however, filed two separate cases, one for murder and another under the Explosives Substances Act, with the Ramna Police Station on the same day.

The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) filed the charge sheet against 14 people in the two cases on November 30 in 2008.

On June 23 in 2014, a Dhaka court sentenced Mufti Abdul Hannan, Moulana Akbar Hossain alias Helaluddin, Moulana Mohammad Tajuddin, Hafez Jahangir Alam Badar, Moulana Abu Bakar alias Selim Hawlader, Mufti Shafiqur Rahman, Mufti Abdul Hye, and Arif Hasan Suman to death in connection with the murder case.

Moulana Abu Taher, Moulana Sabbir alias Abdul Hannan, Moulana Yahiya, Moulana Shawkat Osman, Moulana Abdur Rouf, and Shahadat Ullah were sentenced to life in prison.

The convicts are allegedly members of Islamist group Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami.

The death references of the death row convicts and jail appeals later came to the High Court for hearing. The Explosives Substance Act case, however, is still under trial at the Dhaka 1st Speedy Trial Tribunal.

Mufti Abdul Hannan, one of the country’s most notorious militants, involved in plotting and carrying out all the terror attacks by Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami Bangladesh, was executed on April 13 in 2017 at Kashimpur High Security Prison.

Hannan was executed for carrying out a grenade attack on the then British high commissioner Anwar Choudhury in Sylhet on May 21 in 2004. Some other accused in that case are absconding.