By Mizan Rahman
Dhaka
About 1,200 death-row prisoners have been languishing in jails in Bangladesh for five years or more in some cases because of delay in disposal of death references and appeals by the Supreme Court.
According to statistics in the Supreme Court registrar’s office, 405 death references, cases referred to the High Court by trial courts for judicial confirmation of the death sentences given by them, were pending with the High Court as of October 31.
Court officials said in many of the death references cases, more than one person had been sentenced to death.
No convict can be executed until the death sentence is confirmed by the High Court and subsequently by the Supreme Court, said lawyers.
The number of condemned prisoners was 1,009 in November 2011. It was 1,107 on February 17, 2015 and 1,166 on October 1, 2015. The High Court usually maintains serial of death references in hearing based on dates which they reach the High Court.
The High Court is now hearing death references of 2010, court officials said.
They said that paper books, the compilation of all documents of the case, for the death references of 2011 are now being prepared and the cases would be ready for hearing on completion of the preparation, the court officials said.
They said the death reference in BDR carnage case is now being heard by the High Court breaking the serial on the list of death references on permission from the Chief Justice.
In November 2013, 152 soldiers of Bangladesh Rifles (BDR), now renamed as Border Guard Bangladesh, were sentenced to death on charge of killing their officers from army during the February 2009 mutiny at the BDR headquarters in Dhaka.
At least 50 people were sentenced to death by different trial courts in the past month, according to a report released by UK-based rights organisation Amnesty International Bangladesh on December 14.
Jurist Shahdeen Malik told newsmen that it is now a worldwide tendency not to sentence people to death for offences other than heinous crimes like genocide and crimes against humanity.
“However, we seem to be joining the rank of those countries which impose or inflict most number of death sentences such as China, Iran, among others,” he said, adding: “The large number of executions invariably makes a society cruel, heartless and barbarous. We have embarked on this path of heartlessness.”
He said the fact that almost 400 death references are pending with the High Court means that many of the convicts might have to wait four or five more years before their fates are finally decided.
Such a long wait for eight to ten 10 years in condemned cell is certainly a cruel and inhumane punishment, he said.
After 15th amendment to the constitution in 2011, Shahdeen said, all death sentences needed to be confirmed by the Supreme Court causing further delay in the disposal of such cases which makes the process more inhumane.