Deputy Attorney General ABM Waliur Rahman in his argument before the High Court (HC) Death Reference Bench said the statements of the victim's family members given before the trial court have corroborations that make those more accurate and believable.

Yesterday's appeal hearing on the trial court's order at the HC Death Reference Bench comprising Justice Ali Asgar Khan and Justice Emdadul Haque will continue today.

Shazneen Tasnim Rahman, the youngest daughter of a leading businessman Latifur Rahman, also a class nine student of Scholastica, was raped and killed at their Gulshan home on April 23, 1998.

Latifur Rahman filed a case with Gulshan police station on the night of the murder and the police during their investigation filed another case under the Women and Children Repression Prevention Act.

The prosecution yesterday also pointed out that it could not have been possible for a father to give a false statement after his daughter had been raped and killed in such a brutal and heinous way.

Waliur Rahman also gave an example of a recent higher court order in India that had issued a directive saying that the statement of an aggrieved in a rape case should be sufficient to punish the accused.

He also pointed out that the statements of the victim's father and sisters are true and important, as they had no previous enmity with the accused.

Quoting from the statements of Latifur Rahman and his two living daughters, the prosecution said their statements also prove that the accused has direct link with the murder of Shazneen.

Latifur Rahman bade his 15-year-old youngest daughter goodnight at 8:00pm and went upstairs on the fateful night. Hearing the scream of his domestic help Moslem, he rushed to Shazneen's room and found her bloodstained body, said Waliur.

No civilised being can even think of a father who had experienced such a terrible sight, of giving false statement against anyone, the prosecution claimed.

Quoting from the statements of Shazneen's elder sisters, Waliur said, their accounts prove that they knew about Hasan's attempt to rape their sister.

That is why Latifur Rahman talked to his living daughters and learned about the activities of Hasan from others and became confirmed that Hasan had plotted the killing, Waliur claimed.

The prosecution had placed the statements of Latifur Rahman, her two daughters Shahzreh Haq Shehzi and Simin Hossain, and Shehzi's husband Arshadul Haq before the trial court also.

The witnesses in their accounts, made statements about Hasan's plotting, about hiring of the other convicts by him in exchange of money, and other issues. The prosecution said the witnesses had also mentioned the suspicious behaviours of the accused on the night Shazneen was murdered.

Quoting from Latifur Rahman's statement, the prosecution said the father saw the body of his daughter lying on the floor, some eight feet away from the bed.

He also saw marks of scuffling on her bed but no mark of blood in between the body and the bed, which made him think that more than one person were involved in the killing as there would have remained marks of dragging the body from the bed if one person had committed the crime.

The convicted are Shahidul Islam alias Shahid, a domestic help, Syed Sajjad Mainuddin Hasan alias Azad, a contractor who had been hired to renovate the house the victim was living in, Badal, the contractor's assistant, Shaniram Mandal, a carpenter, and housemaids Estema Khatun Minu and Parveen.

The Second Special Tribunal for Prevention of Women and Children Repression, Dhaka on September 2, 2003 ordered the convicted to be hanged until their death.