A Dhaka court sentenced four people including two staffers of Biman Bangladesh Airlines to 12-year imprisonment in a case filed over smuggling over 9kg gold from Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport.
They have also been fined Tk40,000 each failure to pay which will extend their sentence by another six months.
Dhaka’s Third Special Tribunal Judge Bilkis Akter delivered the verdict on Wednesday afternoon.
The four convicts are Biman Flight Catering Centre (BFCC) pantry men Khandaker Ruhul Amin and Shahinur Islam, and gold smuggling gang members Iftarul Alam Sarker and Riaj alias Amjad.
Of the four convicts, Ruhul Amin and Shahinur Islam were produced before the court for the judgement, while the remaining two were on bail and appeared at the court.
After the judgment, the tribunal sent the four to jail with conviction warrants.
Members of Dhaka Customs House recovered 9.280 kilograms of gold bars from a toilet at the airport on March 15, 2018, and detained Ruhul Amin and Shahinur Islam for their role in this connection.
According to the case, members of the smuggling gang put the gold bars inside a tissue box in the toilet of flight BG-236 from Jeddah to Dhaka.
The two Biman men took the gold bars from the flight and took those away by hiding inside their clothes. Later they hide those inside the food trolleys, only to hand those over to gold smuggling gang members.
CID filed a charge sheet against the four on July 8, 2019, and the tribunal on December 13, 2020 framed charges against them.
The tribunal recorded testimonies of 10 out of 14 witnesses produced by the prosecution.