Photo: Collected
Over 300 members of Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) are being freed on bail after 16 years in jails in an explosive case over the BDR carnage at Dhaka's Pilkhana. The prisoners started coming out of Dhaka Central Jail in Keraniganj and Kashimpur Central Jail in Gazipur on Thursday morning.
Of them, 178 BDR members are set to be freed from Dhaka Central Jail and 126 from Kashimpur Central Jail. Earlier on Sunday, Judge of Dhaka Special Tribunal-1 Md Ibrahim Mia granted the bail to the BDR members in the explosive case.
The court was set up temporarily inside the Dhaka Central Jail. On Tuesday, the jail authorities disclosed the list of the convicts who secured bail.
The necessary documents for the bail were sent to both jails on Wednesday. After completing legal procedures, the Dhaka Central Jail authority started releasing 178 prisoners. The rest will be freed later, said jailer AKM Masud.
The authority of Kashimpur Central Jail has released 38 inmates till 1am on Thursday. Relatives of the freed BDR members were receiving them with flowers and feeding them sweetmeats at the jail gates.
Many were seen breaking down in tears after meeting their dear and near one. On February 25 and 26, 2009, 74 people, including 57 army officers, were killed in a mutiny at the Border Guard Headquarters in Pilkhana.
On 5 November 2013, a Dhaka court awarded death sentences to 150 BDR members and two civilians, and life imprisonment to 160 others in a murder case. On 27 November 2017, the High Court confirmed the death penalty for 139 out of 152 accused.
Following the heinous killings of the army officers at the Pilkhana headquarters, the government renamed the mutiny-hit paramilitary force BDR as Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB), changing its logo as well as uniform.
Messenger/JRTarek
