Md Joynal Abedin Khan :
At least 17 girls who were kept in a in a juvenile residential correction center considering their age after committing various crimes, fled from the so-called ‘Safe Home’ to escape rebuking and torture on them.
They ran away from the correction center as per a long plan after breaking the window of room No. 205 of the safe home which has already been ‘unsafe residence’ for them in view of the staff’s abuse and torture inside the center at Mogorkhal in Gazipur on Friday night.
The girls were angry with the staff of the center for torturing instead of correction and they made a plan to break the legs of beds of the room to use for cracking the windows, reports our district correspondent quoting victims’ relatives, witnesses and internal sources.
In the mean time, 12 girls were brought back to the correction center by the law enforcers recoveries from Gazipur and Tangail districts.
They are Nodi, Lutfun, Afia, and Chameli from Gazipur’s Joydevpur Tania, Rina, Laizu, Lamia, Shabana, Surma, Jesmin and Brishi from Mirzapur of Tangail, said Toaffazzal Hossain, Additional Superintendent (Sadar Circle) of Gazipur Police.
He said that police were trying to re-arrest the remaining five escaped juvenile accused.
The centre house girls under the age of 18 who were arrested on criminal charges, said Centre Supervisor Zobaida Khatun.
“Some of those in room 205 on the second floor of the detention centre managed to break the window bars. “They then tied their shawls and bedsheets together to form a rope and slipped through the window. The escape was detected during an inspection around midnight.”A total of 34 minor girls had been assigned to the centre, she said.
A three-member probe body led by Dider-e-Alam Mohammad Maksud Chowdhury, Additional Deputy Commissioner (General), was formed to investigate the incident. The Committee was asked to submit the investigation report within three working days, Dewan Mohammad Humayun Kabir, Told the New Nation on Saturday evening.
The centre has been warned to ensure that no such escape occurs in the future, the DC said.
“Seventeen girls escaped on Friday night. Twelve of them were later apprehended from Gazipur and Tangail’s Mirzapu, said Shamsunnahr, SP of Gazipur district.
Dider-e-Alam Mohammad Maksud Chowdhury told The New Nation, “They will submit the report in due time.”
In a query, he said, they did not find any link of outsiders in it.
Joydebpur police caught one of them on a road near the centre and three others in the Basan Road area. The eight others recovered were found in Tangail, the SP said.
“They fled the safe home and went to the Dhaka Shahjalal International Airport Rail Station and boarded a train towards norther part of the country,” said Tangail Mirzapur Police OC AKM Mizanul Haque.
“Locals at Mirzapur Rail Station noticed that they were acting strangely and handed them over to police, believing they were Rohingyas.”
District Municipal Panel Chairman SM Moksed Alam said that the same home has already become an unsafe for juvenile due to torture and Efra structure of the building.
A witness said that one of the escaped girls told him that they fled from the center to escape from the repeated torture.
On May 6, 2014, two boys flee from Jessore Child Development Center.
