A Bogra tribunal court has sentenced four people to death for the rape and murder of a seven-year-old child.
Judge Noor Mohammad Shahriar Kabir of the Bogra Women and Children Repression Prevention Tribunal-2 delivered the verdict in the case on Sunday. Each of the convicts was also fined Tk100,000.
The death row convicts are Bappi Ahmed, 24, Kamal Pasha, 37, Shamim Reza, 24, and Lavlu Sheikh, 23. All four were in court to hear the verdict.
The child's parents worked in a garment factory in Dhaka. She lived with her grandparents in Dhanut upazila of Bogra.
On December 14, 2020, a two-day Islamic congregation started near her grandfather's house. She accompanied her grandparents and two aunts to the event. Around 10am, she went to buy sweets from a store next to the stage.
Bappi, a college student working as a volunteer at the event, promised to buy her peanuts and took her to the local education institution where he and his friends raped the child. Bappi had a feud with the victim's father.
She lost consciousness due to excessive blood loss and Bappi strangled her to death and dumped the body in a bamboo grove.
Police recovered the body around midnight and sent it for an autopsy.
On December 15, the victim's father filed a case against unnamed suspects under the Women and Children Repression Act.
Police suspected Bappi's involvement in the murder due to the family feud and kept him and his friends under surveillance.
On December 25, 2020, police arrested the four accused. All of them gave statements in the court from December 25 to 29, accepting the responsibility of strangling the child after gang-rape under Section 164.
On October 25, 2021, Dhanut police finally submitted charges against the four suspects.
Investigating officer, Inspector Zahidul Haque, filed a charge sheet against the four accused in the court on November 25, 2021.
The four were found guilty and sentenced to death on Sunday.
