Key witnesses including Abdus Samad Azad, Mohammad Nasim, Ali Ashraf, Mahbub Uddin Ahmed, Rashed Mosharraf and Dewan Farid Gazi failed to provide any significant information in their depositions to indict the real culprits or killers, he mentioned.

They did not provide any specific evidence linking any accused to any conspiracy or provocation, aiding and abetting in the jail killing, the judge maintained.

ROLE OF JAIL AUTHORITIES
Although they were deployed in the room next to the jailer, outside the jail and on its roof, security personnel including members of Bangladesh Rifles mysteriously assisted the murderers acting on orders of the jail authorities without preventing the killers, reads the judgement.

The people who fought in the Liberation War risking their lives were brutally killed at that time and place by the independent citizens of an independent country, it said.

A prison is a place for a person's safe custody, where people feel protected. It is a tragic and sad incident for the nation when the authorities and security personnel of prison assisted the murderers instead of preventing them, said the judge.

The statements of the ten prosecution witnesses from the prison premises clearly proved that none of the nine killers were produced on the dock for trial, he said.

He identified the then jail authority as a grave violator of law and abettor to the most heinous crime in history.

INVESTIGATION OFFICER'S ROLE
IO Abdul Kahar Akhand blackened the profession of the police by committing crucial and dangerous flaws in the investigation. All killers in the case could not be tried due to his farcical investigation into the incident.

The IO did not conduct any investigation into the role of a couple of accomplices of Muslemuddin (who led the killing squad), the judge said.

He said the identity of all the killers could be learnt and the court might have awarded them the highest punishment had the IO conducted a proper investigation.

Akhand did not present any such evidence to the court that would have revealed and proved the identities of the nine killers.

According to the statement of a jail guard, who saw nine army personnel entering the prison, the jail authorities had indirectly taken part in the killings by assisting the nine who killed the four leaders.

But the IO did not investigate into this matter. According to the jail guard, security personnel stood inactive as the brutal murder and macabre took place.

The judgement said the IO failed to produce the real killers on the dock and did not investigate into the role of those whom he produced.

He did not brought to book the people who opened the jail gate for the killers and helped in gathering the four leaders in a cell and killing them.