Four handed death penalty for killing six-year-old

A Sylhet court yesterday handed down death penalty to four people for abducting and killing a six-year-old boy in Chhatak upazila of Sunamganj in 2015.

The court also fined each of the convicts Tk 20,000.

Among the convicts, Suyebur Rahman Sujon, 32, of Brahmanjulia village in the upazila, was arrested on April 8, 2015. 

At the time of arrest, Sujon was the Imam of a mosque in Batirkandi village and also secretary of Jamaat-e-Islami's Sayla Afzalabad union in the same upazila.

Other three convicts are Jayed Ahmed, 27, Amir of Jamaat's ward 7 unit at Sayla Afzalabad union; Rafiqur Rahman, 33, of Nowarai village; and Saleh Ahmed, 24, of Batirkandi village in the upazila.

Md Rezaul Karim, judge of Sylhet Speedy Trial Tribunal, delivered the verdict, said Kishor Kumar Kar, additional public prosecutor of the court.

The verdict was delivered in presence of three out of the four convicts. The fourth convict, Saleh Ahmed, is still on the run.

According to the case statement, the boy, Mostafizur Rahman Emon, a nursery student at Lafarge-Surma Community School, was abducted from in front of his house on March 27, 2015.

Emon's father Jahur Ali of Batirkandi village was an expatriate in Saudi Arabia. He later filed the case in this connection. 

The abductors took the boy to an undisclosed location and demanded Tk 2 lakh ransom, in exchange for his release, by calling his family over cellphone. They, however, killed the child despite receiving the ransom payment.

Police caught up with the abductors by using cellphone tracking technology and arrested Sujon on April 8 the same year from Kadamtali Bus Terminal in Sylhet.

Sujon in his confessional statement before the court admitted to have murdered Emon. Police recovered the victim's body from Batirkandi Haor. His clothes and the weapons used in the murder were found hidden in the mosque where Sujon was the imam.

On November 21, 2016, Investigation Officer Monjur Morshed pressed a charge sheet against the four accused.