The death reference (all documents) of Major (retd) Sinha Md Rashed Khan murder case, in which suspended OC Pradeep Kunar Das and police inspector Liakat Ali were sentenced to death, has reached the High Court.
Supreme Court spokesperson Mohammad Saifur Rahman confirmed the matter on Tuesday.
He said that officials concerned of the Cox’s Bazar court brought the documents of the case, including the judgement, to the High Court on Tuesday.
If a lower court sentences a person to death in a case, its judgement is examined by the higher court through hearing arguments for confirmation of the death sentence, he added.
The case documents and judgement reached the HC as death reference from the lower court after the latter delivered the verdict as per relevant provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC).
On January 31, Judge of Cox’s Bazar District and Sessions Judge Court Mohammad Ismail delivered the judgement in the sensational Major (retd) Sinha Mohammad Rashed Khan murder case.
The court awarded death sentence to former Officer-in-Charge (OC) of Teknaf Police Station Pradeep Kumar Das and former inspector of Baharchhara Police Investigation Centre Liakat Ali, while it awarded life term imprisonment to six others for killing Major (retd) Sinha in a planned way. The court, however, acquitted seven other accused in the case.
In its observation, the court had said that the killing was premeditated.
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Sinha Mohammad Rashed Khan, 36, was a member of the Special Security Force tasked with guarding the prime minister. He had gone into early retirement to pursue his personal interests.
The retired Major was shot dead by police at the APBn check-post at Shamlapur in Baharchhara on the Cox’s Bazar-Teknaf Marine Drive on the night of July 31 in 2020. At that time, he was driving towards the capital.
After the incident, OC Pradeep had similarly tried to cover up the killing of Sinha as a ‘gunfight’. So, on that night, police arrested Sinha’s co-traveler Shahadul Islam Sefat and another teammate Shipra Debnath from a local resort, and filed drug cases against them.
Sinha and two others had been in the tourist city to film a travel documentary. Investigation later showed Sinha was murdered as he found out local police’s involvement in narcotics smuggling and other crimes in Cox’s Bazar.
The murder prompted countrywide outcry. Against this backdrop, former officers of the armed forces demanded the arrest of all policemen involved in the incident. The-then army and police chiefs rushed to Cox’s Bazar to hold an unprecedented joint press conference over the murder.
Later on August 5 in 2020, Sinha’s elder sister Sharmin Shahriar Ferdous filed the murder case with a Cox’s Bazar court against Pradeep and eight other members of law enforcement agencies.