A youth has been sent to jail for raping a 51-year-old woman with disabilities at Faridganj upazila of Chandpur.
Her ordeals did not end there. The accused in connivance with some influential locals wanted to negotiate the matter with the victim’s family, police say.
Faridganj police arrested Saiful Islam, 25, of the same area after a case was filed in this regard on Wednesday. The court ordered him to jail on Thursday after the police had produced him before it, said Faridganj police station’s Officer-in-Charge Md Shahid Hossain.
According to the case, the accused picked her up from her house and took her to a swampland where he raped her on March 25. He tied a piece of cloth to her mouth so she could not shout for help.
In Khulna, a teenage girl was raped by a youth after being picked up from a street when she was on her way to a village shop in Rupsha upazila on Sunday noon.
Rupsha police station OC Sardar Mosharraf Hossain said that the accused, Rajib Sheikh, had forcibly picked up the girl, 17, and then, raped her at his home in the area.
The survivor’s mother filed a case the next day, leading to the arrest of the rapist from the Rupsha Ghat area. He was sent to jail through court on Wednesday.
Bangladesh has been witnessing an upward trend in rapes and gang rapes. A total of 26,695 rape cases were filed across the country in the past five years, according to a Police Headquarters report that was submitted to the High Court in April.
The report of the Special Crime Branch of the Police Headquarters mentions 4,331 rape cases in 2016; 4,683 in 2017; 4,695 in 2018; 6,766 in 2019; and 6,220 in the first 9 months of 2020.
Rights group Ain O Salish Kendra reports that the country witnessed at least 313 rapes and 71 gang rapes in the first four months of this year.
Following days of protests demanding stricter laws to end sexual violence against women, the government introduced the death penalty for rape in October last year.
