A Dhaka court on Tuesday recorded the confessional statement of Nowrin Jahan Nodi, the alleged abuser of domestic help Aduri, under Section 164 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.
Metropolitan Magistrate Mohammad Earfun Ullah recorded the testimony after Investigation Officer Queen Akter produced the accused at 11am with a prayer for recording the statement. After the statement was recorded, the court ordered for sending Nodi to jail.
Defence counsel Md Rabiul Islam also filed a “custodian prayer” to the court of Metropolitan Magistrate Nuru Miah in which he said the custody of the 8-month old baby girl of the accused be given to her grandmother Ishrat Jahan Baby, mother of the accused.
The court, however, rejected the prayer and ordered for sending the baby girl to jail with her mother.
Nodi’s mother Ishrat told the Dhaka Tribune that Aduri never came back after she had left Nodi’s house after Eid-ul-Fitr. She claimed that neither she nor her daughter had any idea about what had happened to the housemaid.
She also said Nodi had been separated with her husband for a few months. She had even filed an application with the Bangladesh Mohila Ainjibi Samity seeking divorce.
Ishrat said important clues would come out if Nodi’s husband Saiful, who had been absconding for a long time, was arrested.
She claimed that her daughter had not tortured Aduri and that her daughter had been a victim of circumstances.
Meanwhile, the doctors of the One-Stop Crisis Centre (OCC) of the Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) has said the condition of Aduri was slowly getting better.
The seven-member medical team, formed to look after Aduri’s treatment, has been giving her nutritious food and medicine so that the girl could soon get well and released from the hospital.
Dr Bilkis Akter, coordinator of the OCC, told the Dhaka Tribune that Aduri could now walk and take food with her own hands. “She is recovering much faster than we thought. We hope that she will soon be out of danger.”
A rights group called the Housemaid Rights Reserve Network formed a human chain in front of the capital’s National Press Club on Tuesday demanding exemplary punishment for the woman who allegedly tortured Aduri.
Members of various rights bodies and many housemaids took part in the human chain.
Speakers at the human chain demanded that the case filed in connection with the torture on Aduri be transferred to the Speedy Trial Tribunal.
Shamima Begum, deputy commissioner of the Woman Support and Investigation Division of Dhaka Metropolitan Police said they were now searching for Nodi’s husband and the other two accused.
Last week, Assistant Sub-Inspector of Cantonment police station Abdul Mannan rescued Aduri in critical condition from a dustbin in the capital’s DOHS Baridhara area.