Bangladesh HC upholds 20 students' death penalty for lynching university mate

High Court upholds death penalty for 20 students in Bangladesh for beating fellow student to death over politics.

The High Court on Sunday (March 16, 2025) upheld a trial court verdict handing down the death penalty to 20 students of an elite university in Dhaka for beating to death a fellow second-year student over his alleged political affiliation in 2019.

Court officials said the two-Judge Bench of Justice A.K.M. Asaduzzaman and Justice Syed Enayet Hossain pronounced the verdict simultaneously wrapping up the hearing on the mandatory death reference and convicts’ appeals against the lower court judgment.

All the convicts, students of the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), belonged to the now disbanded Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL), the student wing of deposed Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League.

They lynched Abrar Fahad, a second-year student of BUET’s electrical and electronics department on October 7, 2019 over a Facebook post by him criticising the government.

Fahad’s battered body was found in his university dormitory the next morning. Investigations later found that he was beaten to death with a cricket bat and other blunt objects for almost six hours by 25 fellow students.

Both the BUET and BCL immediately expelled these students after Fahad’s murder.

A Dhaka court sentenced to death the 20 convicts on December 8, 2021 when Awami League was in power.