B’desh HC upholds 20 students’ death penalty for lynching university mate

Dhaka, March 16: The High Court on Sunday upheld a trial court verdict handing down the death penalty to 20 students of an elite university here for beating to death a fellow second-year student over his alleged political affiliation in 2019.
Court officials said the two-judge bench pronounced the verdict simultaneously wrapping up the hearing on the mandatory death reference and convicts’ appeals against the lower court judgment.
All the convicts, students of the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), belonged to the now disbanded Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL), the student wing of deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League.
They lynched Abrar Fahad, a second-year student of BUET’s electrical and electronics department on October 7, 2019 over a Facebook post by him criticising the government. (PTI)