Bangladesh Hangs Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s Killer Abdul Majed Who Was Captured After Hiding In Kolkata For 23 Years   

Abdul Majed, a sacked army captain and one of the convicted killers of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the first president of Bangladesh, has been executed at the Dhaka Central Jail, Dhaka Tribune reported.

“The convict was hanged at 12:01am Sunday,” Inspector General (Prisons) Brigadier General AKM Mustafa Kamal Pasha said. He added that other concerned officials including a magistrate, police representatives witnessed the execution as required by the law.

This was the first case of the execution since Dhaka Central Jail was relocated in Keraniganj.

Earlier on Thursday, President Abdul Hamid rejected Majed's petition for presidential clemency, filed by the convict's lawyer Mosharraf Hossain Kajol on April 8.

On Friday, some family members of Abdul Majed were permitted to meet him at Dhaka Central Jail where he had been kept in solitary confinement on death row.

Majed's remains are said to have been buried at his in-law's family graveyard in Sonargaon.

According to a local report, defying the coronavirus lockdown, a number of people emerged in front of the jail at midnight.

Majed was sent to the jail hours after he was arrested in Dhaka on Tuesday (Apr 7).

"Majed said he arrived in the country on March 15 or 16 from Kolkata. He claimed that he was hiding there for about 23 years," The Daily Star quoted Hemayet Uddin Khan, assistant public prosecutor as sating.

Majed was one of the six remaining fugitive killers of Bangabandhu believed to be hiding abroad with no confirmed whereabouts.

Majed served in Bangladesh Embassy in Senegal. He retired from Bangladesh Army in 1980 and joined the civil administration as a Deputy Secretary. He worked at the Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Corporation, Ministry of Youth and Sports as the director of youth development and also in the National Savings Directorate.

Majed disappeared in 1997 after Sheikh Hasina, daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was voted Prime Minister of Banglades. In 1998, he was sentenced to death on the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman case by a trial court.

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and almost his entire family were killed during the early hours of 15 August 1975, when a group of Bangladesh Army officers went into his residence and assassinated Sheikh Mujib as part of a coup.

The assassination conspirators could not be tried in a court of law because of the Indemnity Act passed by the government under President Khondaker Mostaq Ahmad. But act was removed when Awami League stormed back to power in 1996 paving away for the criminal trial of assassins.

In 1998, a Dhaka court ordered the death sentence by firing squad to fifteen out of the twenty accused of conspiring in the assassination.

The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court on November 19, 2009 upheld the death penalty of 12 convicted ex-army officers for the assassination.

Five of the convicts - Syed Farooq Rahman, Sultan Shahriar Rashid Khan, Bazlul Huda, AKM Mohiuddin Ahmed, and Mohiuddin Ahmed - were hanged on January 27, 2010. Another convict, Aziz Pasha, met a natural death in Zimbabwe in 2001.