Sixteen people face the death penalty after allegedly luring a teenager to a rooftop and burning her alive.
Nusrat Jahan had reported a case of sexual assault by her headteacher, and faced a backlash from other students for it who didn’t believe her.
She had gone to police to give a statement, but had been filmed crying by an officer on his phone as she described the molestation, in a video later leaked to local media.
Police can be heard telling her it was ‘no big deal’ as she refuses to move her hands from her face.
After refusing to withdraw the allegations, she went into Feni Madrasa, her Islamic school, to try to sit her exams with her brother as protection.
Instead, she was brought up to a rooftop on the pretense that a friend was being beaten up, and met by a group who allegedly poured kerosene over her and set her alight.
Nusrat, 18, died in hospital from her burns five days later, sparking huge protests and demands for her killers to be found and punished.
The head of the Police Bureau of Investigation said the men and women arrested in connection with her murder would all be charged on Wednesday, with prosecutors seeking the death penalty for all 16.
‘We will be submitting the charge sheet on Wednesday,’ Banaj Kumar Majumdar, said. Bangladesh’s Daily Star newspaper quoted him as saying evidence included a plastic bag used for carrying kerosene, a glass used for pouring it on Nusrat, and three black burqas used as a disguise.
The head of Bangladesh Mahila Parishad, a women’s rights organization, said more needed to be done to ensure the safety of women in Bangladesh.
A study conducted by the group found that about 950 women were raped in Bangladesh last year.
‘Justice has to be ensured,’ said the group’s general secretary Maleka Banu. ‘(But) just ensuring that the Nusrat case is taken care of is not enough. We need to do a lot more to make the situation better for Bangladeshi women.’
Source: Metro, Jen Mills, May 29, 2019
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
