Barguna court jails 11 adolescents, acquits 3 in Refat murder case

A Barguna court has jailed 11 adolescents and acquitted three others in the daylight murder of Refat Shorif in the district town.

In the verdict on Tuesday, Judge Md Hafizur Rahman sentenced six of the convicts to 10 years in jail. Four others were jailed for five years and the other convict was given a three-year prison term.

Apart from them, three juveniles identified only as 11th, 13th and 14th suspects in the chargesheet were acquitted by the court, said Humayun Kabir, a defence lawyer.

The first, second, third, fourth, sixth and seventh convicts were jailed for 10 years, while the fifth, eighth, ninth and 10th were sentenced to five years in prison. The 12th convict was sentenced to three years.

Everyone apart from those related to the case was barred from entering the court during the verdict. Later lawyer Humayun made the court’s decision public.

Nargis Akter, another defence lawyer, said the court ordered the transfer of the convicts to prison following the verdict.

Although the convicts were adolescents during the murder, they crossed the age of 18 during the verdict. Taking this into account, the judge sent them to prison instead of a juvenile detention centre, she said.

In September, a district court separately sentenced Aysha Siddika Minny and five others to death in the 2019 murder of Refat Shorif, her husband. Minny filed an appeal against the verdict to the High Court.

Refat was hacked to death on a Barguna road in June 2019. A video of Minny's desperate attempts to save her husband later went viral on social media.

Assailants launched the attack when the couple was returning home from Barguna Government College, of which Minny was a first-year undergraduate student.