A Cox’s Bazar court has sentenced four people to death and two others to life in prison for the murder of university student Zia Uddin Faisal in 2017.
District and Sessions Judge Md Ismail delivered the verdict in the presence of the convicts on Wednesday, Public Prosecutor Faridul Alam said.
The capital punishment recipients are Rezaul Karim, 25, Nurul Haque, 28, Ramzan Ali, 30 and Md Rubel Mia, 28. They are residents of Pokkhali Union in Cox’s Bazar’s Sadar Upazila, reports bdnews24.com.
Shahin Uddin, 25, and Moni Alam, 24, have been jailed for life and fined Tk 50,000 each. They will have to spend additional six months in jail if they fail to pay the fine.
“Faisal, son of Md Nurul Anwar of Machuakhali village in Pokkhali Union, was a fifth-semester student of law at Cox’s Bazar International University. He used to protest against the sale of drugs in the area. This triggered anger among local drug traders,” PP Alam said, citing the case dossier.
The angry drug traders attacked Faisal when he was near Purba Machuakhali Jame Mosque on Apr 16, 2017. The doctor declared him dead after he was rushed to Cox’s Bazar General Hospital in critical condition.
The victim’s father filed a murder case with Cox’s Bazar Sadar Police Station against nine people a day after the incident. The investigator pressed murder charges against six of them on Jul 4 that year.