NEWS report said an alleged rapist was let to go by a ruling party leader under the cover of village arbitration on payment of Tk 50,000 fine to the victim on condition that she cannot take legal actions against the offender. The incident happened last Friday when a 15-year-old girl was allegedly raped by an elderly man in a village of Parbatipur upazila of Dinajpur district. The alleged rapist fled the village after the arbitration as he managed the local Awami League leader as per the report to mediate the matter against a payment of Tk 50,000 for local arbitrators, in addition to compensation to the victim.
People are really appalled by the development and can’t understand how such cover up to a heinous crime could be arranged by local political leaders while police and local administration took to ignore it in the sideline. Criminals are criminals and the abettors to the crime are also equally criminals as much as they allowed it to go unnoticed and without justice to the victim. In our view, the rapists and the abettors must be put to trial together to give justice to the teen-age girl. In fact, thousands of women suffer rape every year in the country and it is only a handful of incidents that are reported. Most rapes and sexual assaults go unreported each year. The harsh truth of the current situation is that women who face their attackers in village arbitrations are regularly denied justice for prejudice or discrimination towards women that literally enables serial rapists to go scot-free.
The tragedy in this case lies not only in taking bribe by the arbitrators but also how they let the rapist go free. They not only ignore the country’s judicial system at work but also forced the victim as per condition not to go to any court and file a case demanding justice. Actions taken by the local ruling party men in this arbitration was a gross miscarriage of justice as the verdict given was to protect the accused at the cost of the victim’s dignity and right to get justice.
This is terribly wrong to have this idea that money can save a criminal.
