The state has filed an appeal against a High Court verdict that acquitted all the accused, including exiled acting BNP chairman Tarique Rahman and former state minister for home Lutfozzaman Babar, in two cases filed over the August 21 grenade attack.
The cases came on Wednesday's cause list of a four-member Appellate Division bench headed by Chief Justice Syed Refaat Ahmed.
Earlier on 01 December 2024, an HC bench exonerated Mr Tarique, Mr Babar and all others in the cases.
The HC struck down the verdict, pronounced by the trial court in two cases filed over an attack on an Awami League rally in 2004, as "not tenable" in law.
An HC bench comprising Justice AKM Asaduzzaman and Justice Syed Enayet Hossain delivered the verdict after hearing death references and appeals filed against the trial-court verdict.
In its observation, the High Court said the trial-court verdict in the cases was "illegal as it was delivered through illegal way".
The trial court had delivered the judgment on the basis of a confessional statement made by Mufti Abdul Hannan, an accused in the cases, who was later executed in connection with another case.
His statement has "no evidential value as it was taken on force and was not examined properly by the magistrate concerned", reads the HC verdict.
Two cases were filed with Motijheel police station following the grenade attack on an Awami League rally at Bangabandhu Avenue in Dhaka on 21 August 2004, claiming 24 lives and leaving about 300 injured.
One was filed for murder and another was filed under the Explosives Act.
The then opposition leader Sheikh Hasina, who later ran the country for 15 years as prime minister and was forced to resign and flee on August 05 last year following a mass uprising, narrowly escaped the attack.
A Dhaka court on 10 October 2018 sentenced 19 persons, Mr Babar, to death in the two cases filed in connection with the grenade attack. Another 19, including Mr Tarique who is now in London, were given life imprisonment and 11 were handed different terms in prison.
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