BDR carnage 13 years on: Wait for justice not over yet

As 25 February marks 13 years of the mutiny in the country's paramilitary force, families of the victims of the deadly carnage still await the punishment of the perpetrators to be carried out.

Following the two-day carnage that broke out at the Peelkhana headquarters of the then Bangladesh Rifles (BDR), later renamed Border Guard Bangladesh, leaving 74 people including 57 army officers killed, two murder and explosive cases were filed.

In November 2013, a Dhaka court sentenced 152 BDR members to death, 160 to life imprisonment and 256 to various jail terms and acquitted 278 others in the murder case.

After the High Court's disposal, the case is now pending in the apex court's Appellate Division, while the trial court is yet to finish the recording of testimonies of witnesses in the explosives case.

Legal experts have called for a special bench in the Appellate Division to be formed and a time limit fixed in the judicial court for a speedy disposal of these cases.

Advocate ZI Khan Panna, a criminal law expert, told The Business Standard that the two cases are the biggest in the history of Bangladesh. Now it is difficult to say how long it will take to dispose of the appeals.

People concerned say court proceedings were disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic and it was not possible to dispose of the appeals in the murder case and the trial of the explosives case.

Attorney General AM Amin Uddin told TBS Covid has eased considerably and initiatives will now be taken to settle the appeals as soon as possible and for the speedy disposal of the explosive case.

In November 2017, the High Court upheld the capital punishment of 139, commuted eight others' punishment to life imprisonment and acquitted four other death-row convicts. A total of 552 people stood convicted and 283 others were acquitted of the charges.

The High Court judgment, running to 29,059 pages, was published in January 2020.

According to Supreme Court sources, so far 47 appeals and leave to appeals have been filed in the Appellate Division on behalf of 203 of the accused.

The state has moved 20 leave to appeals seeking the death penalty for 83 people who were either acquitted or saw their punishment commuted.

Defence lawyer Mohammad Aminul Islam told TBS that the verdict of the High Court was too large. Appealing against it is very costly. In January last year, it cost around Tk19 lakh to file an appeal on behalf of nine people.

He said the rest of the accused had appealed to the chief justice to file an appeal free of cost, which was granted last year. The appeal hearing may begin this year.

"Hopefully, we will get justice in the Supreme Court," he added.

Explosives case  

Of the 1,344 witnesses in the case filed under the Explosives Act, the recording of testimony of about 200 people has been completed. There are 834 accused in this case. Of them, 33 have already died and 20 are on the run. The accused in the murder case are accused in this case too.

People concerned think it could take another few years to complete the trial in the explosives case.