An anti-terror tribunal in the port city on Wednesday sentenced five members of banned militant outfit Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) to death in the Chattogram naval base bomb blasts case.  Chattogram Anti-terrorism Tribunal judge Abdul Halim handed down the punishment to the five -- Abdul Mannan, Ramjan Ali, Bablu Rahman, Abdul Gaffar and M Shakhawat Hossain, a former member of the Bangladesh Navy. Of them, Shakhawat was tried in absentia. According to the prosecution, 24 Muslim devotees were injured when a number of bombs exploded at the two mosques inside the Isha Khan Base of the Bangladesh Navy on December 18, 2015. Local people managed to catch Mannan and Ramjan red-handed from the spot. On September 3, 2016, M Abu Syed, Marshal Commander of the Naval Provost of the Bangladesh Navy, lodged a complaint with EPZ Police. Read: Bangladesh marks 17th anniversary of serial blasts Police subsequently registered a case under the Anti-Terrorism Act and the Explosive Act. In 2017, cops submitted a chargesheet against the five JMB men. Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) detained Bablu from Jhenaidah district on October 30, 2017, while Gaffar was arrested by police in another case. He was shown arrested in this case later. END/UNB/Corr/MAS/JM

A special anti-terrorism court in the western Indian state of Gujarat on Friday sentenced to death as many as 38 people in a 13-year-old serial bomb blasts case. This is by far the highest number of death sentences given by any Indian court in one go. The same court had earlier convicted 49 people for the terror attack -- a series of 31 blasts in a span of an hour -- that claimed 56 lives and injured more than 200 others in the city of Ahmedabad in Gujarat in 2008. Also read: Indian Minister's son, accused of killing farmers, granted bail Eleven of the remaining convicts have been sentenced to life imprisonment by special court judge AR Patel. None of the life-term convicts would be entitled to parole after 14 years, the court made it clear. In fact, a total of 80 accused were put on trial in the case. On February 8, the court, however, acquitted 28 others in the case for lack of evidence. During the trial, the prosecution held the home-grown terror outfit Indian Mujahideen responsible for the blasts.  Also read: PM Narendra Modi sold tea at this Vadnagar stall in Gujarat. Now it will be a tourist spot The terrorists had carried out the serial blasts as an act of revenge for the 2002 riots in Gujarat that claimed the lives of over 1,000 people, mostly minority Muslims, according to police.