A CASE was filed with the Rajbari Police Station on Saturday against four burqa clad people for trying to kill a class ten female student in Pachuria Union under Rajbari Sadar Upazila by dousing her with kerosene and setting her ablaze after kidnapping her from home on Thursday afternoon. The victim’s father lodged the case naming Shilpi Begum, wife of Jahangir Alam, a neighbour of the victim and three unnamed accused for trying to murder his daughter.
The First Information Report says that Shilpi and her three accomplices assaulted and set the victim on fire after she refused to pay Tk Two lakh despite the assaulters’ threat that they would upload her indecent photos they had forcibly taken on April 12 on the social media.
This incident happened only two months after Feni madrasah student Nusrat Jahan Rafi was set on fire. But the context is different. Here we have a situation where a lone individual had the audacity to extort a girl by asking money for not spreading pictures of her in a compromising position.
One wonders how these people become so audacious. The immediate thought that comes to mind is that they think they have access to corridors of power who they think will save them from the force of the law. But even then it takes a blatant disregard for human life to want to take a life in so callous a manner just because they did not give in to extortion demands.
These people must be punished in an exemplary manner so that in the future no one would think of committing such heinous acts again. Unfortunately for women in Bangladesh there is only a 3.1% chance that the court will rule in favour of the victim in cases of violence. On the other hand, there is a 32% chance that the court will dismiss a case and release a perpetrator.
So there must be a more proactive role by the police and judicial authorities to ensure that no violence related case against women are taken lightly to ensure that proper punishment is meted out to the culprits.
