Dhaka: Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan on Sunday said there is no bar to the execution of death sentence of Harkat‐ul‐Jihad (Huji) chief Mufti Abdul Hannan as the Presided rejected his mercy petition.

‘We’re taking preparations as per the Jail Code to execute the death sentence as soon as possible,’ he said while talking to reporters at the Secretariat.

Replying to a query, the minister said there is no threat of any militant attack or something like this over the execution.

Asked about the security arrangement during the Pahela Baishakh celebrations, he said several thousand members of law enforcement agencies, including police and Rab, will be deployed throughout the country to maintain the law‐and‐order situation.

On 19 March, the Appellate Division upheld the death sentence of Mufti Hannan, Delwar Alias Ripon and Sharif Shahedul Alam alias Bipul after hearing the review petitions filed by the three death‐row convicts. It released the full text of its verdict on March 21.

On 7 December, 2016, an SC bench, headed by Chief Justice SK Sinha, upheld the death penalty of the three in the case rejecting appeals filed by the Huji chief and Bipul challenging the High Court verdict that had upheld their death sentence awarded by the tribunal.

In 2004, the then British High Commissioner Anwar Choudhury came under a grenade attack while coming out of Hazrat Shahjalal’s shrine in his hometown Sylhet. The envoy and 40 employees of the Sylhet district administration were injured in the attack.