The Supreme Court yesterday acquitted four persons including former Awami League leader M Abdul Kader of the Rushdania Islam Bushra rape and murder case.
Bushra, then 18-year old marketing student of City College and a daughter of police official late Serajul Islam, was raped and killed in the capital's Hazipara on June 1, 2000 over a land grabbing move.
The other three are: Kader's wife Runu Kader, and his bothers-in-law Sheikh Shawkat Ahmed Ruhul and Sheikh Kabir Ahmed.
Kader, who was the then relief and social welfare secretary of the ruling party's Dhaka city unit during the incident, has been in jail since 2000 and Runu since 2006, while Shawkat and Kabir are free as they had earlier been acquitted by the High Court in a 2007 verdict.
A four-member bench of the Appellate Division of the SC headed by Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha delivered the verdict after hearing four appeals filed by Kader, Runu and the government against the HC verdict that also affirmed the death sentence of Kader and sentenced Runu to life imprisonment.
After dismissing the government's two appeals, the SC upheld a portion of the HC verdict that acquitted Shawkat and Kabir.
However, its full text has not been released yet.
Defence counsel Khandker Mahbub Hossain told The Daily Star that the SC gave the verdict after accepting his arguments that there was no eyewitness of the incident.
The allegations brought against them were not proved, but the HC and lower court had punished them considering the incident's "surrounding circumstances," said Mahbub, adding that the duo will get released from jail after the SC order will reach the jail authorities.
Meanwhile, Deputy Attorney General Khandaker Diliruzzaman told this newspaper that the government will decide whether to move a petition before the Appellate Division seeking review of the judgement after receiving its full text.
In 2003, a Dhaka court sentenced Kader, Shawkat and Kabir to death and Runu to life imprisonment and acquitted two others in the killing case.