World News | Bangladeshi Man Languishes in Jail for 7 Years Despite Acquittal in Murder Case
Get latest articles and stories on World at LatestLY. A Bangladeshi man, who was handed the death penalty in a murder case, languished in a death row cell in jail for seven years despite the High Court acquitting him, media reports said on Tuesday.
Dhaka, Feb 11 (PTI) A Bangladeshi man, who was handed the death penalty in a murder case, languished in a death row cell in jail for seven years despite the High Court acquitting him, media reports said on Tuesday.
According to Prothom Alo newspaper, Ibrahim Ali Sheikh Sagar was freed from jail on Saturday after 21 years of imprisonment, seven of which were in solitary confinement as a death row convict, in a wrongly implicated murder case.
“I was in misery while staying in the condemned cell (isolation cell specially meant for death penalty convicts). The agony followed me when I came out of jail too,” he told the newspaper.
During the long imprisonment, his wife abandoned him marrying another man while his single mother was forced to sell family property due to poverty while Sagar stayed at his brother-in-law's house.
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“I was shouldering the family's responsibility before going to jail... I worked as a night guard at Joypur Bazar and sometimes worked as a rickshaw van driver for some extra income,” Sagar said.
He said due to financial constraints, he could not appoint a lawyer while a state-appointed lawyer could not prove his innocence resulting in the death penalty.
According to him, the verdict was scrapped during the mandatory death reference hearing in High Court, when the lawyer of a jail mate also defended him but he died shortly after giving him the good news.
He said since the jail authorities did not receive the release order, he called a helpline using a facility for the death row convicts when the matter surfaced.
“I lost 21 years of my life for a crime in which I was not involved in anyway,” Sagar said.
Legal rights activist and lawyer Kudrat-e-Khuda called the incident an “example of inactiveness of our justice system”.
Inspector general of prisons Brigadier General Syed Md Motaher Hossain said he was recently appointed as prisons chief on deputation but “we are working to resolve problems wherever they arise”.
“We are committed to ensuring prisoners do not face unnecessary hardships,” he said.
(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)