The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court yesterday rejected a petition filed for reviewing its earlier order that upheld death penalty to Shahid for murdering Scholastica school student Shazneen Tasnim Rahman at her house in Dhaka in 1998. A three-member bench of the Appellate Division headed by Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha dismissed a petition filed by Shahidul Islam alias Shahid seeking a review of the court’s judgment that confirmed his death penalty.
The apex court, on August 2 last year, upheld the death penalty of Shahidul, a domestic help of the house, and acquitted four others in the case.
Shazneen Tasnim Rahman, daughter of Transcom Group Chairman Latifur Rahman, was killed at her Gulshan residence on April 23, 1998. She was a ninth grader of Dhaka's Scholastica school.
On September 2, 2003, Judge of the Women and Children Repression Prevention Tribunal Kazi Rahmatullah sentenced six of the seven accused to death in the case filed over the rape and murder of Shazneen in 1998. One of the accused died in police custody during the probe. The High Court on July 10, 2006, confirmed death sentence for five convicts and acquitted carpenter Shaniram Mandal after the convicts challenged the tribunal’s verdict before it. Later, four of the convicts filed a leave-to-appeal with the Supreme Court against the High Court order that was granted by the Appellate Division on April 26, 2009. Those acquitted are Syed Sazzad Mainuddin Hasan, a contractor for repair work of the house; Sazzad’s assistant Badal and maids Estema Khatun Minu and Parvin. Shahid now has only one option left to save him from the noose – to seek presidential pardon. The sentence would be executed upon the settlement of his appeal if he seeks clemency from the President. Shahidul’s lawyer Barrister Monoj Kumar Bhoumik told reporters that his client may seek presidential clemency after the release of the full judgment of the apex court. If the president does not give him mercy, the jail authorities will execute Shahid, he said.