DHAKA: A Bangladeshi court has sentenced nine junior opposition politicians to life in prison for murdering a journalist who had published reports on corruption, a prosecutor said yesterday.
Gautam Das, 33, Faridpur bureau chief of Bengali daily Samakal, was strangled in his office after reporting on corruption in the then- ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).
It was the first time a court had successfully tried a journalist’s murder case. He was murdered in November 2005. His colleague M Hasanuzzaman filed a case accusing 10 people, nine of them members of the BNP. The judge of the Dhaka Speedy Trial Tribunal, Shahed Nuruddin, called Das “brave, fearless, honest” and a crusader against social injustice and graft, prosecutor Abu Abdullah Bhuiyan said. The journalist’s widow Dipali expressed anger that the murderers escaped the death penalty. AFP
