A student of Dhaka University has accused former DU Central Students' Union (Ducsu) vice president (VP) Nurul Haque Nur of abetting rape.
The student filed the case against six person on Sunday night with Lalbagh police station, according to Officer-in-Charge (OC) KM Ashraf Uddin.
All of the accused are members and leaders of the Bangladesh Students’ Rights Council Bangladesh Students’ Rights Council and are current and former students of Dhaka University.
According to the case dockets, the reported rape incident took place on January 3 this year, when the prime accused Hasan Al Mamun, convener of the independent student body, allegedly raped the victim.
The others, accused of abetting the crime, are Nazmul Hassan Shohag and Md Saiful Islam, joint conveners of Bangladesh Students’ Rights Council, Nazmul Huda, vice president of the organization’s DU unit, and Abdullah Hil Baki, a student of the university and an activist of the organization, who spearhead the quota reforms movement in 2018.
The reported victim is a postgraduate student of the university’s Islamic studies department and is also a member of the same student body led by Mamun.
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Mamun – a former student of the same department – and the victim fell in love and were in a relationship since they first met back in July 2018, added the case statement.
“We [the victim and Mamun] used to talk on different social media platforms, such as Facebook Messenger, Imo, and WhatsApp, where evidence of him provoking me to be physically intimate can be found,” said the victim in the case statement.
The victim claimed that she visited Mamun at his house in Old Dhaka’s Lalbagh area after he had asked her to do so on the day of the reported incident.
“With the false promise of marriage, he raped me at his house,” she mentioned in the case statement, which reads that she was finally admitted at Dhaka Medical College and Hospital [DMCH] with the help of Shohag, one of the six accused in the rape case, on January 12.
The victim, in the case statement, also said that she tried to contact her other friends who were working as Dhaka University correspondents at different Bangladeshi newspapers but Shohag obstructed her from doing so following Mamun’s instructions.
“In the meantime, Mamun agreed to marry me as I kept insisting about it.
Members and activists of the Bangladesh Students’ Rights Council protesting the rape case filed against ex-Ducsu VP Nur and five other in Kakrail, Dhaka on Monday, September 21, 2020 | Rajib Dhar/Dhaka Tribune “However, at one point he started ignoring me,” she further alleged in the case statement.
Later on, according to the victim, she sought former Ducsu VP Nur’s help in settling the issue as Mamun and Nur were in the same organization. Subsequently, Nur and the victim met in Nilkhet on June 24 this year, after Nur had assured the victim of a settlement of the matter.
“But instead of settling the issue, he [Nur] forbade me not to go too far with the matter. He held out the threat that he would have things posted on social media platforms, labelling me as a prostitute with the help of his followers.
“He said that he would circulate this on the Facebook group of Bangladesh Students’ Rights Council, which has around 1.2 million members. He even told me that he would go live on Facebook to defame me,” the victim added in the case statement.
The alleged victim added that she was traumatized over the incident and accordingly had to take time to reveal the matter to her family for due action, which was why she had filed the case so late.
Accused deny allegations
When contacted, Mamun denied the allegations, saying it was all planned.
“I don’t know anything about the case. The allegations that have been brought against me are false and I did nothing like this and this whole thing has an ill motive,” he claimed.
Meanwhile, former Ducsu VP Nur termed the allegations raised by the reported victim as “a personal affair between her [victim] and Mamun.”
“Mamun requested me to negotiate this issue between them. But I rejected the proposal as it was their personal problem,” he said.
Meanwhile, the victim could not be reached for comments despite repeated attempts.
When contacted, Lalbagh police station OC KM Ashraf Uddin said that the police had started investigating the case and would disclose their findings later.
Leaders and activists of the Bangladesh Students’ Rights Council brought out a procession yesterday evening protesting the lawsuit.
There are currently at least six cases filed against Nur, who has also been a target of at least seven physical attacks on different occasions in the past few years following his emergence as one of the leading voices of the anti-quota movement.
