A Chittagong court sentenced a man to death and fined him Tk1 lakh yesterday for killing his pregnant wife in 2010 for dowry.
The court also ordered Chittagong district collector to collect the fine within six months from the defence side and hand over the money to the victim’s family, said court sources.
Judge Md Rezaul Karim of Women and Children Repression Prevention Tribunal 1 gave the verdict when the accused, Fazle Karim, 38, was presented before the court, the sources said.
Advocate Chandan Talukder, prosecutor in the tribunal, told the Dhaka Tribune that the court had sentenced the death penalty to the accused under section 11 (A) of Women and Children Repression Prevention Act as the allegation against him was proved beyond reasonable doubt.
The convict was sent to the Chittagong Central Jail after the verdict, he said.
According to the case document, Fazle, of Pashchim Boroghona village of the Banshkhali upazila in Chittagong, had tortured his wife, Bilkis Akhter, of the same village, for dowry since their wedding in 2009.
On June 21, 2010, the convict beat a pregnant Bilkis to death in his residence demanding a dowry of Tk2 lakh.
He had attempted to establish the murder as suicide by pouring poison into Bilkis’s mouth, which was discovered during the post-mortem, according to the case document.
Jannat Khatun, Bilkis’s mother, filed a case before the tribunal accusing five persons including the convict on August 2, 2010 after receiving the post-mortem report. Banshkhali police took the First Information Report on September 8, 2010 after completing judicial investigation according to the order of the tribunal.
Later, police submitted a charge sheet against Fazle before the tribunal on March 22, 2011. The court framed charges against the lone accused on September 18, 2012.
The court sentenced the verdict after taking statements of 10 prosecution and two defence witnesses at the trial.