Dhaka – Former state minister for home affairs Lutfozzaman Babar and four others were acquitted from a case related to sensational 10-truck arms haul, in which he was awarded with life in prison sentence by a trial court.
A High Court bench of Justice Mustafa Zaman Islam and Justice Nasreen Akter passed the order on Tuesday after a hearing, with his lawyers saying that there was no obstacle to Babar’s release from prison.
Babar was the state minister for the Ministry of Home Affairs during the 2001-2006 tenure of Bangladesh Nationalist Party-led alliance government.
Shishir Monir, a defence lawyer, said he hoped that the High Court order would be the prison authorities today and Babar would be released in a shortest possible time.
Former Directorate General of Forces Intelligence director Maj Gen (Retd) Rezzakul Haider Chowdhury, Mohsin Talukdar, Enamul Haque and Nurul Amin are the other persons who were acutted by the court on Tuesday.
The court also commuted the death sentences of five convicts to different jail terms. Indian separatist outfit United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) chief Paresh Barua’s death sentence was reduced to 14 years in jail.
The death sentence of Akbar Hossain, Liakat Hossain, Hafizur Rahman and Shahabuddin was, however, commuted to 10 years.
The court also exempted four others including former Jamaat-e-Islami chief Motiur Rahman Nizami, Dwin Mohammad, former National Security Intelligence director general Abdur Rahim and Hazi Abdus Sobhan as they had died during the trial proceedings. All of them had been given life imprisonment in the case.
Nizami was executed in 2016 over his crimes committed during Bangladesh’s 1971 war of liberation.
On December 18, 2024, the High Court acquitted six death row convicts including Babar in a case filed under the Special Powers Act alongside the arms case related to the seizure of 10 truckloads of arms at the jetty of Chittagong Urea Fertiliser Ltd on April 1, 2004.
Investigators reported the China-made arms, meant for the Indian insurgents, were smuggled through Bangladesh as they investigated two cases one under the Arms Act and another under the Special Powers Act.
Both cases were filed with Karnaphuli police station in Chattogram accusing 50 people in the arms case and 52 in the other for their alleged involvement in the attempted smuggling.
Chittagong Metropolitan Sessions Judge SM Mujibur Rahman sentenced 14 people to death under the Special Powers Act on January 30, 2014.
They are included former Jamaat-e-Islami chief and the then Industries Minister Motiur Rahman Nizami, former state minister Lutfozzaman Babar, ULFA chief Paresh Barua, former DGFI director Maj Gen (Retd) Rezzakul Haider Chowdhury and former NSI director general Abdur Rahim.
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