A court has sentenced a woman to life imprisonment with hard labour for killing her husband, a Jubo League worker in Mymensingh, by giving him sleeping pills and then strangling him. She was also fined 50 thousand taka, with a further six months’ rigorous imprisonment in default.
The Mymensingh special sessions judge, Farhana Ferdous, delivered the verdict in the presence of the accused at about midday on Wednesday. The woman sentenced to life is Afroza Sheikh, also known as Iti. She was the second wife of the Jubo League leader Shafiqul Islam, also known as Sapu, 25, who was killed.
After the verdict the convict was sent from the court to Mymensingh central jail. As she was taken out of the courtroom, Afroza appeared cheerful rather than downcast. As she was being sent to jail she said to reporters, laughing: “Film as much as you like, let everyone see.”
After the verdict Nurunnahar, the mother of the dead man and the complainant in the case, said she had hoped for a death sentence for the accused. She said: “After my son was killed, Afroza put on a show of searching for him for three days. My son was killed brutally. I had hoped for the death penalty for the accused. After the verdict the accused went out laughing, saying, ‘Don’t worry, I’m coming back. I’ll come back and play again.’ We need protection. I am not satisfied with the verdict; I do not accept this judgment.”
According to the court and the case documents, Shafiqul Islam, son of Suruj Miah of the Bashbari colony area of the city, first married Mahmuda Akhter. They have a son. Shafiqul later married Afroza Sheikh, keeping the first marriage secret. At one point Afroza learned that her husband was in regular contact with his first wife and their child. That led to conflict between them. Arising from that dispute, the case documents say, Afroza Sheikh deliberately made her husband unconscious by giving him about 200 sleeping pills on 10 June 2019. She then strangled him with an orna, wrapped the body in a quilt and hid it under water hyacinth in a stagnant pond beside the house.
Three days after the incident, local people saw a human hand floating in the pond and informed police. Police then recovered the partly decomposed body from the scene and sent it to the morgue at Mymensingh Medical College Hospital for a post-mortem examination.
Over the incident, Shafiqul’s mother Nurunnahar filed a murder case at Mymensingh Kotwali Model Police Station on 13 June 2019. Her daughter-in-law Afroza Sheikh and Afroza’s elder brother Deen Islam were named as accused in the case. Police completed their investigation and submitted a charge sheet against Afroza Sheikh to the court on 3 February 2020.
The public prosecutor, Md Akram Hossain, conducted the case for the state and the lawyer Sajjadur Rahman appeared for the defence. The court delivered the verdict after taking evidence from 12 witnesses.
The public prosecutor, Md Akram Hossain, said the court had observed in its judgment that the accused is a woman and has a child. Taking that into consideration, she was given life imprisonment with hard labour rather than the death penalty.
Afroza Sheikh’s brother, Sheikh Sabbir, said the family was not satisfied with the verdict and would appeal to the higher court. He claimed his sister was not involved in the killing and had been deliberately framed in the case. He said there had been conflict in the household for a long time because Shafiqul Islam took a second wife although he already had a first wife. He said his sister had suffered various forms of abuse and that her having a child should also have been taken into consideration. The family had expected an acquittal from the outset, he said, and would therefore appeal against the verdict in the higher court.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report