The High Court yesterday acquitted condemned prisoner Shahidur Rahman alias Shahid Commissioner and lifer Tanoy Mollah of murdering BNP leader Advocate Habib Mandol.
Habib Mandol, a city unit BNP leader, was gunned down by unidentified assailants in front of his Banogram residence in Old Dhaka on August 20 in 2000.
Following jail appeals against trial court verdict, a High Court division bench of Justice AKM Fazlur Rahman and Justice Quamrul Islam Siddiqui delivered the judgment, exonerating the two convicts.
The High Court, however, upheld the death sentence of terror kingpin Kala Jahangir and life imprisonment of 12 other convicts.
The lifers are Nurul Huq, Abdul Malek, Chakma Apu, Pichchi Hannan, Kala Sharif, Rahman, Sentu, Akhtar Hossain, Alamgir, Kachi, Biplab and Dakat Shahid.