HC starts fresh hearing on August 21 grenade attack

The High Court today started a fresh hearing on the death references and appeals of the August 21, 2004 grenade attack cases.

The cases were filed following horrifying grenade attacks during an Awami League rally at Bangabandhu Avenue in Dhaka that claimed 24 lives and left about 300 injured.

The then opposition leader Sheikh Hasina narrowly escaped the attack.

The HC bench of justices AKM Asaduzzaman and Syed Enayet Hossain began the hearing with Deputy Attorney General Md Jasim Sarker and Assistant Attorney General Laboni Akter reading out case details, trial proceedings, statements, evidence, verdicts and other related documents.

Senior Advocate SM Shahjahan, a defence counsel for the convicted accused, also placed the backgrounds of the cases before the bench.

The HC fixed November 7 to resume the hearing.

Earlier, the HC bench of justices Shahidul Karim and Md Mostafizur Rahman held hearings on death references and appeals of the case for around 100 working days since December 5, 2022.

However, this bench, on August 18 this year, dropped the cases from its hearing list as its junior judge has been assigned to another bench.

Chief Justice Syed Refaat Ahmed recently assigned the bench led by Justice AKM Aasaduzzaman for holding a fresh hearing and to dispose of the cases.

DAG Jasim today told The Daily Star that the previous hearings of these cases will not be counted.

A Dhaka court on October 10, 2018 sentenced 19 people, including former BNP state minister for home affairs Lutfozzaman Babar, to death in the two cases filed in connection with the grenade attacks.

Nineteen others, including BNP acting chairman Tarique Rahman, now in London, were given life imprisonment and 11 people were handed different terms in prison. Eighteen of the convicted accused are absconding and 31 are in jail.

The death references of the cases reached the HC on November 27, 2018, for examination of the trial court's verdict.

On January 13, 2019, the HC accepted the appeals filed by the convicts for hearing. The same day, the HC also stayed parts of the trial court verdict that fined the convicts.