Special Correspondent :
In an increasing trend of violence against women, the wives are getting kidnapped, tortured, raped and even killed in the hands of their husbands or ex-husbands in different parts of the country in the recent days.
Some of the incidents have occurred when the wives decided to get separated from their husbands.
Although there is no accurate government data available, the media reports revealed that at least a dozen of wives had so far been murdered, raped and kidnapped by their present or ex-husband directly or indirectly in the last three months across the country.
In the latest incident, a woman was reportedly gang raped by her former husband and his two accomplices at Torabganj under Kamalnagar upazila in Laxmipur district.
According to the information available, Md Abul Kalam, son of Anwar Ali, hailing from Torabganj, along with his two friends, forcibly picked up his ex-wife when the victim was going to Laxmipur by an auto-rickshaw on Friday evening.
Later, the trio took the victim to an isolated house and raped her one after another throughout the night and beat up her. Later, the victim was rescued on Saturday afternoon and admitted to Laxmipur Sadar Hospital.
Officer-in-Charge of Kamalnagar Police Station Akul Chandra Biswas said the prime accused Md Kalam got a divorce from her wife following family feud a few months ago.
In another sensational incident, a Rajshahi university student was abducted on Friday from the campus allegedly by her ex-husband. The victim was rescued by the law enforcers from Mohammadpur area in Dhaka on Saturday. Police also arrested the former husband Shohel from the spot.
Country’s eminent sociologists have expressed grave concern over the recent trend of family violence saying that these incidents are happening as the government has failed to educate the male mentally about the “women empowerment”.
Expressing severe dissatisfaction over the increasing trend of violence against women, Chairman of Women and Gender Studies of Dhaka University Dr Syed Md Shaikh Imtiaz told The New Nation on Sunday, “We’re definitely observing a very difficult situation.”
The risk factor is that, in the incidents those occurred in the last three years, the majority of the victims were bellow 15 years of age. That means, more than 60 percent of the victims were children, Dr Imtiaz further said referring to the latest research report.
Experts said the gender based violence [GBV] persists largely in Bangladesh due to deep rooted patriarchal social norms. The worst manifestation of such social malaises as well as the existing forms of GBV is child marriage which is widely prevalent in the country.
A report prepared by Bangladesh Demographic and Health Surveys, about 59 percent of women aged 20-24 marry before they turn 18. “Child marriage puts girls at particular risk of sexual, physical and psychological violence throughout their lives,” the BDHS report said.
Pointing the issue, Dr Imtiaz said, “In most of the cases of GBV, we see involvement of the victim’s close relations or known persons in the violence.”
He said the male youths do not get any education about “women respect” or “women empowerment” at school, college and even university level. So, most of the men do not know how to respect the women, even the members of his own family.”
