Man exonerated after spending 16 years in jail for murder

The Appellate Division has acquitted a man in a murder case after he spent 16 years behind the bars.

A four-member bench headed by Chief Justice Syed Mahmud Hossain Tuesday ordered authorities concerned to release Humayun Kabir immediately.

Deputy Attorney General Biswajit Debnath told The Business Standard that Humayun will be released as soon as the verdict copy reaches to the jail authorities.

The court in its verdict said that the allegations brought against the accused in the case could not be proved due to the inconsistency in testimony of the witnesses and investigation.   

On June 30, 2004, a first grader of Sakera Government Primary School at Laksam in Cumilla, left home for school at around 10:15am. However, her guardian filed a general diary with the police station the same day as the student did not return home.

Two sixth-grade students of the school said that they saw the student lying on the culvert with a headache in Sakera village. When they asked the child to go home, accused Humayun Kabir, who was a driver in profession, told them he would take her home introducing himself as her maternal uncle.  

On July 2 of that same year, police filed a case under the Prevention of Women and Children Repression Act with Laksam Police Station and arrested truck driver Humayun Kabir on July 4.

On the same day, the body of the child was recovered from the forest near the culvert. It was later converted into a murder case.

On September 29, 2004, police filed a charge sheet in the case. Later, on April 5, 2006, Judge AHM Mostaq Ahmed of the Chattogram Speedy Trial Tribunal sentenced him to death.

Humayun filed a petition to review the lower court verdict the same year, but his death penalty was upheld in the verdict. Later, he again appealed to the Appellate Division in 2014.