A Chattogram court has sentenced two people to death and another to life imprisonment in the case over the murder of Mahfuzur Rahman in the city’s EPZ area.

The verdict was delivered on Tuesday afternoon by Chattogram’s Third Additional Metropolitan Sessions Judge Nishaduzzaman.

The convicts sentenced to death are Tanvir Mohammad Sajib and Md Hridoy, while the one given life imprisonment is Md Ahsan alias Yasin.

Additional Public Prosecutor M A M Azad told Banglanews that the court handed down the death penalty to Sajib and Hridoy after the charges were proven beyond doubt, along with a fine of Tk25,000 each. Ahsan was sentenced to life imprisonment and fined Tk20,000, in default of which he will serve an additional three months of rigorous imprisonment.

All three convicts were present during the pronouncement of the verdict and were later sent to prison under warrant.

According to case documents, on 2 May 2020, police recovered Mahfuzur Rahman’s body from a room beside Shahin Shah Tower in the city’s New Mooring area under EPZ police station. The convicts had tied his hands and feet, gagged his mouth with cloth, and sealed it with tape before suffocating him to death. To stage the killing as a suicide, they hung his body with a nylon rope from the staircase grill of the two-storey building.

Following investigation, police submitted the charge sheet to the court, which on 25 January 2022 framed charges under Section 302 of the Penal Code and ordered the trial to begin.

MSK/