President of Bangladesh M. Abdul Hamid on Thursday rejected the mercy plea of Abdul Majed, the fugitive convicted killer of the founder President of Bangladesh Sheikh Mujib in 1975.

A Dhaka court had issued his death warrant on Wednesday after he was arrested on Tuesday by the Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) unit of Bangladesh from Mirpur area of Dhaka.

Confirming the rejection of the mercy plea by the President, Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal told the official news agency BSS that now there was no bar on the execution of Abdul Majed and the jail authorities will take steps to hang him as per jail code provisions.

Abdul Majed is among the 12 former army personnel who were awarded death sentence in 1998. It was later confirmed by the High Court in 2009. Five of the convicted army personnel were hanged in 2010 while one died. Six of the convicted army personnel have been absconding. Abdul Majed was one of them.

Earlier, Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal had said on Wednesday that the ‘self confessed killer’ of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was also involved in the subsequent murder of four top leaders of the country in Dhaka central Jail on 3 November 1975. He said that Majed claimed to live in hiding in Kolkata for the last 23 years after fleeing the country, reports BSS.

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was killed along with most of his family members on 15 August 1975 by some army personnel at his residence in Dhaka. The trial for the killing started 22 years later in 1997 after the incident.