The Supreme Court yesterday commuted the death sentence of three convicts to imprisonment till natural death in sensational Gopal Krishna Muhuri murder case of Chattogram.

Principal Gopal Krishna Muhuri of Nazirhat College in Chittagong was killed at his Jamal Khan Road residence in Chattogram on November 16, 2001. Three gunmen accompanied by an unarmed criminal broke into his house, dragged him to the drawing room from his bedroom and shot him in his head.

The gruesome killing of an educationist only 35 days after the then BNP-Jamaat coalition came to power shocked the nation.

Yesterday, a three-member bench of the Appellate Division of the SC headed by Justice Muhammad Imman Ali passed the order after hearing the convicts' appeals.

The grounds on which the apex court commuted their sentence could not be known immediately as the full text of the verdict was not released.

The three convicts are Azam, Alamgir Kabir alias Baitta Alamgir and Taslim Uddin Montu and they are now in condemn cell, Deputy Attorney General Amit Das Gupta told The Daily Star yesterday.

He said the three convicts will be kept in normal prison cell as they are not death-row convicts. The DAG, however, could not say in which jail they are serving their punishment.

Following the death reference and appeals of the convicts, the High Court on July 19, 2006 upheld a lower court verdict that sentenced four people -- Nasir alias Gittu Nasir, Azam, Alamgir Kabir alias Baitta Alamgir and Taslim Uddin Montu -- to death for killing Gopal Krishna Muhuri.

Of them, Gittu had been killed in crossfire with Rab on March 2, 2005.

The other three, who are in jail, filed separate appeals with the SC challenging the HC verdict.

Lawyers Khandker Mahbub Hossain and Helal Uddin Mollah appeared for the convicts.