Police yesterday arrested an alleged stalker, two days after a schoolgirl committed suicide in Gaibandha sadar upazila. The girl has also left behind a five-page suicide note.
Amina, 15, a ninth grader at the Gaibandha Government Girls’ High School, committed suicide by hanging herself with a saree from a tree near their home in Dulaler Vita village under Kholahati union on Saturday night.
Her family alleged that arrestee Rayhan, 19, used to stalk Amina on her way to school almost everyday.
Police took the matter seriously and eventually detained the young man after Gaibandha Deputy Commissioner Md Abdus Samad visited Amina’s house and talked to her parents. Gaibandha police chief Ashraful Islam accompanied the DC.
Amina’s mother Shilpi Begum said that on August 7, Amina was going to attend private tuition in Gaibandha town, when Rayhan stopped her on the way and forcefully took her to a nearby place called Garerbata.
Rayhan used one of his female cousins, who is a neighbour to Amina, to convince her to go with him.
At one point, local people in Garerbata noticed that they were having a loud altercation. They then got hold of them and brought them to Amia’s residence in Dulaler Vita.
Later that night, Rayhan’s father, who is a vegetable vendor in a nearby village market, went to Amina’s house along with some local influential people and arranged for an arbitration.
The arbitration decided that Amina will have to marry Rayhan and fixed August 16 for the wedding. The girl did not have consent to this marriage although her rickshaw-puller father and housewife mother agreed to the arbitration’s decision. After that, the local influentials and his family took Rayhan back home.
On the night of August 15, a day before the scheduled wedding, Amina left a note and committed suicide.
Police later that night recovered the dead body, sent it to the Gaibandha government hospital for autopsy and also took the five-page suicide note as evidence, said Rajiur Rahman, OC of the Gaibandha sadar police station.
The OC however refused to give details of the autopsy report and the content of the note for the sake of investigation. The dead body was later handed over to the family.
He also said: “We have registered an unnatural death case with the police station. Rayhan was arrested in the early hours of Tuesday on the basis of a tip off. He is now being interrogated. I cannot tell you anything more for the sake of the investigation.”
When contacted, Gaibandha DC Samad also refused to make any comment because investigation was going on.
Both Amina’s parents are illiterate, but some of their neighbours had the chance to have a look at the suicide note before police took it.
According to neighbours, Amina wrote in the note that she was being stigmatised for having an affair with Rayhan and she did not want to get married to him.
Her family said Amina was a brilliant student. She got distinction in the grade five Primary School Certificate examination.
Rayhan’s neighbours said Rayhan, who just had primary education, was an unemployed youth and was known for stalking many other girls.