The High Court has upheld the death penalty of eight convicts and commuted two convicts to life imprisonment in a case filed for killing schoolgirl Smrity Debnath Sima after rape during a robbery in Laxmipur in 2012.
An HC bench of justices Bhabani Prasad Singh and Md Kamrul Hossain Mollah passed the order on Tuesday (Jan 28) after hearing the death reference and appeals filed by the convicts.
The eight death row convicts are Hiron, 24, from Cumilla, Manik, 30, Rashed, 25, Sumon, 20, Hedayet Ullah Hedu, 50, Nurunabi, 27, and Saddam Hossain alias Rubel, 19, from Noakahli, and Nure Ala alias Nuru, 22, from Laxmipur.
Those got their sentence commuted are Anwar Hossain, 23 and Sohel.
Of the convicts, Manik, Rashed, Sumon, Saddam, and Sohel are on the run.
Lawyers Mahbub Uddin Khokon represented the convicts where Deputy Attorney General Aminul Islam stood for the state in the court.
On Sept 16, 2014, a Laxmipur court awarded 10 people with capital punishment fined them Tk 100,000 each in the murder case acquitting 15 others.
According to the case documents, a gang of robbers, numbering 25-30, swooped on the house of Manik Laxman Debnath at Basudouhita village in Laxmipur's Sadar Upazila on Jul 18, 2012, and looted valuables worth Tk 500,000 holding house inmates hostage at gunpoint.
The robbers also strangulated Manik’s daughter Sima, then a Class-VII student of Pratabganj High School, after raping her.
On the next day, the victim’s grandfather a case while police pressed charges against 24 accused on Mar 25, 2013.