Ninety-five soldiers of the 9 Battalion and the 18 Battalion of the then Bangladesh Rifles, now renamed as the Border Guard Bangladesh, were on Saturday sentenced to rigorous imprisonment for varying terms on charges of the February 2009 mutiny in Rangamati.
Special court 15 of the Border Guard Bangladesh, presided over by the Chittagong sector commander, Lieutenant Colonel Zahedur Rahman, also fined the soldiers Tk 100 each.
The court pronounced the verdicts in two cases with the accused soldiers in the dock in the makeshift courtroom at the Rangamati sector headquarters.
Most of the soldiers told newsmen that they had been denied justice and they claimed themselves to be innocent.
The court jailed 74 soldiers of the 9 Battalion and 21 soldiers of the 18 Battalion for two months to seven years.
The court acquitted two accused soldiers — Suberdar Major Md Shah Alam and Havilder Selim Reza — of the 18 Battalion of the charges.
Saturday’s verdict took to 886 the number of BGB soldiers sentenced on mutiny charges so far for the 2009 rebellion that began at the border guards’ headquarters in Dhaka on February 25, 2009 and flared up in other BGB establishments across the country on February 26, 2009. In the rebellion, 75 people, including 57 army officers, were killed in Dhaka.
The first verdict in the mutiny cases was pronounced in Panchagarh on April 7, 2010. Twenty-nine soldiers of the 25 Battalion were jailed.
Later in 2010, special courts sentenced 50 soldiers of the 20 Battalion on April 12 in Thakurgaon, 57 soldiers of the 9 Battalion on April 18 in Feni, 56 soldiers of the 7 Battalion of Nildumur at Shyamnagar on April 19 in Satkhira, 9 soldiers of the 12 Battalion of Langadu in Rangamati on May 2, 35 soldiers of the 10 Battalion’s Bolipara camp on November 9 in Bandarban, 23 solders of the 31 Battalion on November 23 in Lalmonirhat, 20 soldiers of the 3 Battalion on December 23 in Jaipurhat, 39 soldiers of the 21 Battalion on December 29 in Sylhet, 59 of the 38 Battalion on December 30 in Sylhet and 29 of the 1 Battalion on December 31 in Brahmanbaria.
In 2011, the courts jailed 35 soldiers of the 15 Battalion of Naikhyangchari on January 3 in Bandarban, 23 soldiers of the 40 Battalion of Phulbari on January 16 in Dinajpur, 25 soldiers of the 43 Battalion on January 24 in Naogaon, 61 soldiers of the Sylhet sector Sadar Battalion on January 31 in Sylhet, 111 soldiers of the record wing on February 1 in Dhaka, 72 soldiers of the 32 and the 35 Battalion on February 2 in Kushtia and 44 soldiers of 37 Battalion on February 3 in Rajshahhi.
The courts have so far acquitted 21 soldiers of the charges — one in Thakurgaon, five in Feni, four in Satkhira, one in Lalmonirhat, five in Sylhet, one in Kushtia and two in Rangamati.
