The Murder of Rakib Hawlader

A child worker in Khulna

Rakib Hawlader worked at a motorcycle repair workshop in Khulna's Tutpara area. Contemporary court reporting described him as 12 or 13 years old; the differing age references appear in reputable sources, so this archive does not force a single age where the record is inconsistent.

Rakib left the workshop owned by Omar Sharif and began working elsewhere. Prosecutors said Sharif and his uncle, Mintu Khan, became angry about the move. On August 3, 2015, Rakib was assaulted at the workshop with compressed air from a repair-shop pump. He was taken for treatment but died from internal injuries.

Arrests and the first trial

Rakib's father, Nurul Alam Hawlader, filed a murder case the next day. Police arrested Omar Sharif, Mintu Khan and Sharif's mother, Beauty Begum. The prosecution moved unusually quickly: investigators submitted a charge sheet within weeks, and the murder trial began in October 2015.

On November 8, 2015, the Khulna Metropolitan Sessions Judge's Court convicted Sharif and Mintu of murder and sentenced both to death. Beauty Begum was acquitted because the court found the evidence insufficient to prove the charge against her. This page therefore does not describe her as a convicted participant in Rakib's killing.

High Court review

Bangladesh's High Court reviewed the death sentences. On April 4, 2017, it upheld the murder convictions but commuted both death sentences to life imprisonment and imposed fines. The court noted mitigating factors in sentencing, including that the two men did not flee and had taken Rakib for medical treatment after the assault, as well as the absence of prior criminal records.

The High Court's full written judgment was released in May 2017. The reduction in punishment did not erase the murder convictions; it changed only the sentences.

Supreme Court outcome

The convicts sought further review. On February 22, 2021, Bangladesh's Appellate Division rejected their leave-to-appeal petitions and left the High Court's life sentences in place. Reporting from The Daily Star, UNB and The Business Standard all described the Supreme Court outcome consistently.

That ruling provides a sufficiently definitive appellate posture for this archive to classify the case as Solved / Adjudicated. Omar Sharif and Mintu Khan remain the convicted killers in the published record reviewed here; Beauty Begum's acquittal is also preserved.

Why the case mattered

Rakib's death generated national outrage not only because of the cruelty of the assault, but also because he was a child working in an adult industrial environment. The criminal case itself moved far faster than many major murder prosecutions in Bangladesh, producing a trial verdict within months and later appellate review that clarified the final custodial sentences.

The archive keeps the focus on Rakib rather than on reproducing the mechanics of the assault. The essential legal facts are that two men were convicted of murder, the High Court replaced the initial death sentences with life imprisonment, and the Appellate Division left those life terms intact.