12-yr-old schoolboy arrested on rape charges

A 12-year-old schoolboy has been arrested in a case filed over the rape of a minor at Boholbaria union in Mirpur upazila, Kushtia on Monday. The accused, native of Sahebnagar village in Boholbaria, is a student of Class III in a local school, while the victim is a preschool student in the same school. The accused was sent to a juvenile correction centre after Mirpur police produced him before Kushita Chief Judicial Magistrate's Court on Monday. According to the case statement, the accused assaulted the child on October 10 after luring her into a paddy field. On October 14, the victim’s father took her to Kushtia General Hospital, and on October 23, he filed a complaint against the boy with Kushtia Women and Child Repression Prevention Tribunal. Judge ABM Mahmudul Haque of the tribunal later ordered the acting OC of Mirpur police station to accept the complaint as a case. The accused's father has dismissed the allegations, claiming that the victim's father had falsely implicated his son as there is a long-standing dispute over land ownership between him and the victim's father.