A Dhaka court has deferred the probe report submission date in the murder case of Major General Abul Manzur to Mar 28.
District and Sessions Judge SM Pradip Kumar Ray gave the verdict on Thursday (Jan 17), after the investigating officer in the case CID special police Superintendent Abdul Kahar Akand asked for more time to submit the report.
Former military dictator HM Ershad, and two retired army personnel, Kazi Emdadul Hoque and Mostafa Kamal Uddin Bhuiyan are the three suspects in the case.
The hearing for the case is ongoing at the makeshift District and Sessions Judge Court beside Dhaka Central Jail.
In 2014, Judge Khandakar Hassan Md Firoz who was hearing the case directed the CID to carry out a thorough probe and submit the report by Apr 22.
According to the case dossiers, Manzur was taken to Chattogram Cantonment from prison on Jun 1 of 1981 and shot to death.
Manzur's older brother Barrister Abul Mansur Ahmed then filed a case over the matter on Feb 28, 1995, 14 years after the murder.
In 1995, Akand charged Hoque, Abdul Latif, Shamsur Rahman, Mostafa Kamal and the then imprisoned Ershad over the case.
Over the course of nineteen years, the case changed hands under 22 judges.
In January of 2014, the then judge fixed the verdict date to Feb 10 of that year but 13 days before the hearing, the judge was changed once again.
Ershad, who is the leader of the opposition in the 11th Parliament, pleaded innocent in 2012 after 28 out of the 49 witnesses were produced in court. All the suspects in the case are out on bail.