ANOTHER woman was killed in a running bus on Friday night. This time her father was also pushed off the vehicle on Dhaka-Tangail highway in Savar. The incident may remind one of the rape and murder of law student Rupa Khatun inside a running bus in Tangail over a year ago.
Police said Jarina Khatun, 45, along with her father Ali Akbar, 75, of Khaj Kawali village in Sirajganj’s Chauhali upazila, went to Ashulia’s Unique area to visit her daughter Rozina, who recently became a mother. Following the visit, Ali and Jarina got into a Tangail-bound bus at the local bus stop around 5:00pm on Friday. Rozina’s husband Nurul Islam saw them off.
Nurul said he called Ali over his phone around 9:00pm and came to know that the father and daughter were beaten inside the bus and Ali was dragged out of the vehicle in Moragang area of Ashulia. Ali said there were 10 to 12 passengers when he and Jarina boarded the bus. After some of the passengers got down, the others blindfolded the two and started assaulting them.
Hours later, the law enforcers found Jarina’s body near Moragang area beside the highway. The body was sent to Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College for an autopsy. Nurul next day filed a case with the police station. Police suspect that the victim was strangled to death. Police are not yet clear whether these men who committed the act were hardcore criminals.
From January 2014 to December 2017, a total of 17,289 cases of women and child rapes were recorded throughout the country. The total number of victims in those cases was 17,389, of which 13,861 were women and 3,528 children. During the period, 673 people were convicted and sentenced in 3,430 cases disposed of by the courts with 17 death penalties, 80 life imprisonments and 576 in different prison terms.
There is a simple way to stop such heinous crimes–and that is to find the perpetrators quickly and punish them in the highest way allowed by law. These crimes often occur because certain malevolent actors take a chance enjoying relax mood of the law enforcers.
We need a higher conviction rate and harsher sentences for such crimes to stop them from being committed in the future.
