A Chittagong court yesterday sentenced six people to death in a case filed for killing a student nearly five years ago.

Five more people were awarded death penalty by a Rangpur court for the murder of a physically-challenged woman in Pirganj upazila in 2006. The convicts include a younger brother of the victim.

Himel Das Supam, an SSC GPA-5 achiever, was found dead in Bandarban after his abduction in May 2011, just four days before the results were published.

Chittagong Women and Children Repression Prevention Tribunal-2 Judge Selim Miya fined the six convicts Tk 10,000 each for the murder, said Public Prosecutor (PP) MA Naser.

Fifteen witnesses testified at the trial and the charges against the accused were proved beyond doubt, he said.

The convicts are Mahmudul Islam and Nazrul Islam alias Lal Miah of Chittagong's Banshkhali; Sunil Das and Mizanur Rahman Chowdhury of Satkania; Hossain alias Sagar of Chandpur; and Mohammad Selim of Bandarban. Sagar and Selim are on the run.

All the convicts but Nazrul were also awarded rigours life imprisonment and fined Tk 1 lakh each for abducting the boy, said the PP.

Sources said the court in its observation termed the murder a “heinous crime”. It also ordered the district collector to realise the fine by selling the movable and immovable properties of the convicts and pay the money to the victim's mother.

According to the prosecution, Sunil, a distant uncle of Himel, looked after a farm and other properties of the boy's family at Dharmapur in Satkania. After Himel's father passed away, Sunil and Mizanur, a local in Dharmapur, made a plan to kill Himel, who had no brother, to grab his family properties. 

Mahmudul and the other convicts were hired to execute the plan.

Accordingly, Mahmudul then befriended Himel. On May 8 in 2011, Mahmudul invited him over the phone to visit Meghla area in Bandarban from where the boy went missing, said the prosecution.

Three days later, Himel's mother Papiya Sen, headmistress at a primary school at Patiya, lodged a general diary with Double Mooring Police Station in Chittagong.

She filed the case days after Himel's decomposed body was recovered from Naga Jhiri, some five kilometres off Meghla Parjatan Kendra in Bandarban.

PP Naser said Mahmudul and his brother Nazrul in their confessional statements admitted to strangling Himel to death as per the plan.

After the murder, his body was pushed from the peak of a hill, he added.

Papiya Sen expressed satisfaction over the verdict and called for its quick execution.

“I don't want any mother to lose her son this way,” she told The Daily Star in an emotional voice.

RANGPUR VERDICT

Abu Jafar Md Kamruzzaman, additional district and sessions judge in Rangpur, yesterday sentenced five people to death for killing physically-challenged Anjira Khatun in 2006.

The convicts are Abdul Majid, younger brother of the woman, Mominul Islam, Ariful Islam, Emdadul Haque and Anwarul Haque of Kumarpur village under Pirganj upazila of the district.

 According to the prosecution, Anjira, 30, daughter of late Abul Hossain of Kumarpur village, was a beggar and lived with Abdul Majid in their house in Pirganj.

On the night of March 9, 2006, Abdul Majid along with four of his associates slit her throat over a family dispute and dumped her body into a nearby bamboo forest.

Abdul Baki, elder brother of the woman, lodged the case against the five with Pirganj Police Station after the recovery of the body the next day.

Faruk Md Reyajul Karim, assistant public prosecutor, said all the five convicts were present at the court yesterday.