The Appellate Division on Sunday deferred until tomorrow the hearing on a government petition for permission to appeal against a High Court verdict that acquitted acting Bangladesh Nationalist Party chairman Tarique Rahman and 48 others in the two August 21 grenade attack cases.
A three-member bench led by Justice Zubayer Rahman Chowdhury passed the deferral order, observing that the matter would be heard by a full bench headed by chief justice Syed Refaat Ahmed.
Additional attorneys general Abdul Zabbar Bhuiyan and Arshadur Rouf, who appeared for the state, and defence counsels SM Shajahan and Kayser Kamal who represented former state minister for home Lutfozzaman Babar and Tarique Rahman, respectively, agreed to the postponement.
On December 1, 2024, a High Court bench comprising Justice AKM Asaduzzaman, who was later promoted to the Appellate Division, and Justice Syed Enayet Hossain overturned the October 2018 trial court verdict, declaring it illegal on grounds of multiple procedural and legal inconsistencies.
The Dhaka Speedy Trial Tribunal-1 on October 10, 2018, sentenced 19 people, including Lutfozzaman Babar, to death, 19 others, including Tarique Rahman to life imprisonment, and 11 more to varying prison terms in connection with the grenade attack.
Tarique Rahman, elder of Bangladesh Nationalist Party chairperson Khaleda Zia鈥檚 two sons, was tried in absentia, as he has been living in London since 2008.
The grenade attack, carried out on August 21, 2004, targeted an Awami League rally on Bangabandhu Avenue in the capital, killing 24 people, including senior AL leader Ivy Rahman, wife of the late president Zillur Rahman.
Then opposition leader Sheikh Hasina, who was the prime minister during the verdict of sentencing 49 individuals in 2018, narrowly escaped the attack but sustained hearing damage.
Two cases鈥攐ne for murder and the other under the Explosive Substances Act鈥攚ere filed the following day of the attack against unidentified assailants.
