The Appellate Division, in a review judgement, reduced a man’s death penalty to life imprisonment yesterday.
A four-member bench headed by Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha gave the order after reviewing the appeal of Shukur Ali, who has been in jail for 14 years for violating and killing a seven-year-old. Shukur, from Shibrampur village of Manikganj, will now spend the rest of his life in jail.
His lawyer MK Rahman said this is the first a convict’s death penalty had been commuted in review. “But we plan to seek presidential mercy and hope to get the sentence annulled,” the lawyer said.
Shukur’s trial began in 1999. A court in Manikganj found him guilty and sentenced him to death on July 12, 2001.
Rights organisation Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust (BLAST) took the case to the High Court and challenged the death penalty but the court upheld the sentence in 2004.
The Appellate Division the following year also upheld the death sentence and scrapped a review plea in May. In 2000, the government amended a law that said the highest punishment for rape and murder of a child or woman could either be death or life imprisonment.
But Shukur was tried under the previous law that said any individual or more than one person causing the death of any child or woman after rape would be given death.
BLAST filed a review on this ground and Shukur got his sentence commuted yesterday.
A BLAST press release quoted National Human Rights Commission Chairman Mizanur Rahman as sayin that the Supreme Court judgement was very significant.
“Today, the highest court of the land has accepted that the death penalty is not applicable for children. This judgement has led to the protection of children rights in Bangladesh,” he said.
