Sexual predator posed as beggar to harass women, girls in Rajshahi

Police on Sunday arrested 62-year-old Enamul Haque Bulu for sexually harassing women and children in broad daylight while pretending to be a beggar in Rajshahi.

The culprit was arrested after a video of his heinous acts – which showed how Bulu, in the guise of a beggar, came close to multiple women and school-going girls and sexually assaulted them – went viral on different social media platforms recently.

Social media users have condemned the incident and have demanded exemplary punishment for the culprit.

This comes at a time when Bangladesh is experiencing an upsurge in the number of rapes and incidents of violence against women across the country amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

Boalia police station Officer-in-Charge (OC) Nibaran Chandra Burman, while addressing a press briefing on Monday, confirmed that Bulu, originally a resident of Kalinagar village under Manda upazila of Naogaon, is in fact financially stable and was purposely faking as a beggar with the sole objective of sexually harassing women of all ages.

No evidence suggested that the accused – married and a father of two –was mentally unstable, the OC added.

He said: “Bulu was identified from the video and was swiftly arrested. One of the survivors who was sexually harassed filed a case over the incident with us.”

The eight-minute long viral video, shot and posted on Facebook by an individual named Saiful Islam Dulal, shows Bulu, seeking help only from those who are females in the busy Shaheb Bazar area of Rajshahi.

He was seen continuously touching them inappropriately, pretending as if he had done it unknowingly or it was all a mistake.

Saiful, in his post, wrote that he had followed Bulu and seen him doing the same horrific acts with everyone. He also wrote that many bystanders avoided confronting the accused thinking that he was a senior citizen and whatever that was happening was unintentional.

He also wrote that before he could bring this incident to the notice of the police, he had lost Bulu in the crowd.

Everyone needed to become wary of such people, Saiful warned, urging the authorities concerned to bring people like Bulu under the law as soon as possible. 

“Or else, women will continue to be harassed on the streets every day,” he concluded.