NATIONAL dailies reported recently on the sexual assault and later death of a Bangladeshi woman in the hands of Indian miscreants at Nagpur Railway Station in India about a month ago. Her body was returned to Bangladesh recently and buried at her ancestral village in Jessore. The report flashed out in the sideline of a series of deaths of Bangladeshi nationals caused by Indian nationals including Indian Border Security Force (BSF) in the recent past. The report said the 20-year old Bangladeshi woman was kidnapped, raped and killed while travelling with her blind mother and minor daughter for medical treatment in Delhi. The abduction took place at late at night when the woman and her family was travelling in a passenger train bound for Delhi from Kolkata in March. Since the mother was blind, the kidnapping was witnessed by her young grand-daughter. She said about five miscreants at first told them that the train has reached Delhi and when they got down at the platform, they kidnapped the woman.
It is almost a regular phenomenon in recent time when Indian nationals are frequently killing Bangladeshi nationals and the list now includes rape and murder of an innocent woman in a central Indian city. We know that hundreds of Bangladeshi nationals – both man and woman visit India for medical check up and the killing of such a female patient by muggers is highly deplorable.
Just this week another English daily reported on how eighteen Bangladeshi nationals were killed by BSF along the border between the two countries in the last three months alone. They have also allegedly tortured 17 Bangladeshi nationals and abducted 37 others during the same period from the border areas, according to figures provided by Rights Groups. This is a troubling scenario when political and diplomatic relations between India and Bangladesh are stated to be fine, we can’t really understand how the good relation and killing of our innocent people can go side by side. Such killings are simply unacceptable. Particularly the killing of the innocent female patient must be investigated. Bangladesh must take the issue with the Indian government to find out the circumstances in which she was abducted from the railway station, tortured and raped and later killed.
It is important that the Indian government must take note of the fact that Bangladeshi nationals go to visit India on legal visa and significantly contribute to their annual earnings from tourism. Nobody expects that they would be killed but it has happened. We know rape to women in Indian big cities is a big crime but when our people go on the visit, they expect the minimum safety. We hope the authorities concerned in both countries will look into the mater to make the life of our visitors safe.
