AMIDST festivities of Pahela Baisakh, the Bengali New Year on Tuesday at least 20 women were assaulted by 30 to 40 unruly youths at different points near the TSC in the Dhaka University Campus and at Suhrawardy Uddyan gate. News report said they had gone there to join the celebrations in the evening. But instead of sharing happy moments, they were roughed in the crowd. The rogue elements suddenly broke lose on the women, pulled their clothes and sought to harass them otherwise turning the festive occasion to shame.
The fact that the attackers were reportedly members of the student wing of the ruling party, as news report said, appear to be the biggest impunity to the attackers. Officer-in-Charge of Shahbagh Police has reneged the incident as ‘some isolated event,’ and said they would arrest the culprits. They are waiting for the CCTV footage from Metropolitan Police to identify the attackers.
The biggest question how a group of unruly elements could ignore police presence and attacked women. They feel protected under the present political regime. It also does not add to our police image when we see they have failed to protect members of some other student organizations who moved ahead to save the women. Some of them were also beaten and seriously injured.
It is a sad disappointment that though our police are able and competent but they are unable to act freely to help the innocent ones. Dhaka University proctorial office expressed frustration as to why police did not close gate of Suhrawardy Uddyan before sunset as they had advised.
