YANGON, Myanmar - A regime court sentenced to death five people detained for their alleged involvement in a deadly August 2021 shooting on a train in Yangon on Thursday.

On September 3, 2021, the Myanmar military apprehended four men and one woman in Yangon.

Six police officers were killed on a train traveling Yangon's circle line during the attack, which occurred amid a nationwide wave of armed resistance against the coup that occurred nearly seven months earlier.

Several statutes, including the 1949 Arms Act and the 2014 Counterterrorism Law, charged detainees with murder and illegal weapon possession.

According to a source familiar with the proceedings, the verdicts were decided by Khin Ni Ni Aye, the district judge of Ahlone Township, where the attack occurred nearly two years ago, and the sentences were handed down at a closed-door hearing on Thursday morning at Yangon's Insein Prison. According to the source, security at the prison was beefed up for the occasion.

According to the source, the death penalty was the first imposed by a civilian court rather than a military court since the coup. The sentences are alarming, according to the source, especially since other detainees are awaiting trial on the exact charges.

"Previously, only military tribunals could issue death sentences." "However, this is the first from a civilian court judge, which worried people," the source said.

According to data maintained by the monitoring group Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, 117 post-coup prisoners are currently on death row, and the military regime has sentenced another 42 people to death in absentia.