The High Court (HC) would host hearing sessions for the death reference and the defendant’s appeal on Sunday over the rape-murder of eight-year-old Asiya in Magura last year.

The High Court bench of Justice Bhishmadev Chakrabortty and Justice KM Rasheduzzaman Raja would convene the hearing, according to the Supreme Court website.

On Wednesday, the bench was given a dedicate role for swiftly disposing of death references under the Women and Children Repression Prevention Act.

Death sentences given by a trial and lower court are passed to the High Court for validation and final approval.

On 30 June last year, a separate HC bench accepted the appeal by death-row convict Hitu Sheikh, 44, against the lower court’s sentence for termination.

On 17 May that year, the Women and Children Repression Prevention Tribunal in Magura had sentenced Hitu Sheikh to death on charges of raping and murdering Asiya.

Asiya was the younger sister of Hitu Sheikh’s daughter-in-law. The little girl was raped, and mutilated on 1 March last year. The grotesque assault led to her death at the Combined Military Hospital 12 days later.

According to family sources, Asiya had went to her sister-in-law’s home in in Nijnanduali Mathpara, Magura Sadar on 1 March to give company to her elder sister, who had complained of inappropriate sexual advances by a certain male figure in the house other than her husband.

That male figure, Hitu Sheikh, made Asiya, her family’s hand-picked savior for her elder sister, the ultimate prey.