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Published : 15 Jul 2026, 07:43 PM
The High Court has acquitted a man sentenced to death for the abduction and murder of college student Jhorna Rani Deuri, citing flaws in the investigation and insufficient evidence.
The bench of Justice Bhishmadev Chakrabortty and Justice KM Rasheduzzaman Raja delivered the verdict on Wednesday.
In its observations, the court said the prosecution had "completely failed" to prove the charges against the suspect Liton Mondal beyond reasonable doubt.
Deputy Attorney General Syed Ejaz Kabir said the court found significant legal flaws in the identification of the victim's body.
"Though the inquest and postmortem cited strangulation, there were major weaknesses in identifying the body,” he said.
According to him, Jhorna's father identified the body without seeing it directly, relying instead on clothing and a photograph shown by police.
He added that the photograph used during identification was not included in the lower court records.
Defence lawyer Bulbul Rabeya Banu said the case had initially been filed as an abduction case before a murder charge was later added.
She argued that the prosecution had failed to establish the legal elements of abduction under Section 362 of the Penal Code, including force, deception, inducement or coercion.
The defence also questioned the credibility of the prosecution's only witness, saying he came forward only after the unidentified body had been buried and was a relative of the victim rather than an independent witness.
Rabeya further argued that no DNA test had been conducted to confirm the identity of the body, while the prosecution's "last seen" theory failed to establish a complete chain of events linking the accused to the alleged murder.
On Jun 27, 2019, Judge Md Mizanur Rahman of the Pirojpur Women and Children Repression Prevention Tribunal convicted fugitive Liton and sentenced him to death, while acquitting three other suspects -- Ratan Deuri, Ranjit Howlader and Bipul Shakhari -- for insufficient evidence.
The prosecution had presented 12 witnesses.
According to the case records, Jhorna, an HSC student of Ramchandrapur Shah Mahmudia College, went missing on May 14, 2009, while returning from her elder sister's home in Bagerhat’s Kachua.
Her father, Subhash Chandra Deuri, filed the case on May 24, alleging that Liton had harassed his daughter after his marriage proposal had been rejected.
The prosecution said a witness claimed to have seen Jhorna travelling with Liton and others on a trawler on the day she disappeared.
Three days later, after newspaper reports of an unidentified young woman's body being recovered from the Sandha River River in Banaripara, her father identified the body as his daughter's.
