The High Court yesterday cleared the way for a lower court to resume the trial for the murder of cadet Sharmila Shaharin Pollen.

Pollen, 18, a twelfth grader of Mymensingh Girls' Cadet College, was found dead in the bathroom of her dormitory on February 11, 2005.

Yesterday, Justice Farah Mahbub and Justice Mahmudul Hoque rejected a petition jointly filed by four accused challenging the trial.

The court also lifted its earlier stay on the trial.

There is no legal bar to resuming the trial following the HC verdict, complainant's lawyer Khandker Mahbub Hossain told The Daily Star.

In March last year, a Mymensingh court indicted five people in the case -- then adjutant Maj Nazmul Haque, then associate professor Abul Hossain, then sergeant Nawsher-uz-Zaman, then security guard Hena Begum, and then deputy adjutant general Maj Monir Ahmed Chowdhury. Maj Monir is absconding.

In June last year, the HC stayed the trial following a petition by the remaining four.

Pollen's father Abul Bashar Patwary, a retired air force officer, of Chandpur, says her daughter was tortured and strangled, and then her body was hanged inside the bathroom to pass it off as a suicide.