A total of 1,235 people, mostly youths, were arrested in 172 cases of alleged harassment of or physical assault on women in the first 10 months of the current year, police statistics show.
In addition, 466 ‘general diaries’ alleging harassment of women were recorded with different police stations across the country in the same period, the police said.
In October, 26 cases and 53 general dairies were filed with different police stations accusing 196 people of harassing women and schoolgirls resulting in the arrest of 149 people.
The police headquarters, however, could not provide any information about the total number of people arrested on charges of harassment of women since the government on November 9 amended the Mobile Court Act 2009 empowering the mobile courts to prosecute those alleged to have been stalking girls or women.
Although no official figures are available, police officials said, ‘At least 100 people so far have been jailed by mobile courts for various terms across the country.’
On November 9, the home affairs ministry, in the wake of media reports of an increase in the number of stalking incidents around the country, issued an official gazette notification that resulted in the incorporation of section 509 of the Penal Code into the list of offences that could be dealt with by mobile courts.
Section 509 of the Penal Code say that any one ‘intending to insult the modesty of a woman, utters any word, makes any sound or gesture, or exhibits any object, intending that such word or sound shall be heard, or that such gesture or object shall be seen, by the woman, or intrudes upon her privacy, shall be punished with simple imprisonment for a term which may extend to one year, or with fine, or with both.’
Executive magistrate of Dhaka district Md Selim Hossain told New Age on Tuesday that a total of six people were jailed for various terms in five incidents for stalking in the city.
The decision to set up mobile courts for summary trial of stalkers was taken in view of a number of incidents in which women committed suicide apparently in the face of constant teasing and harassment, injuries inflicted on woman and a number of men who had tried to stop stalkers were killed.
A report by Ain O Salish Kendra on October 2 said that at least 25 women had committed suicide in the country in the first nine months of 2010 because of harassment, while 17 others, including a woman, were killed for protesting against harassment of girls.
Mizanur Rashid, a 36-year old chemistry lecturer of Lokmanpur College in Natore, died in a hospital on October 24 after stalkers on a motorcycle ran him over for protesting at harassment of a female student.
Shortly afterwards, Chapa Rani Bhowmik, 48, was killed by 24-year old Debashish Saha Rony, after she protested against sexual harassment of her daughter.
On Saturday, eighteen-year-old Suma Aktar, a higher secondary student of Barguna, was admitted to the Trauma Centre in Dhaka after Mohsin Sikdar, 29, also a resident of the area, and two of his friends cut her legs and a hand when she was on her way to college.
A mobile court sentenced a caretaker of a residential building in the city’s Banashri Housing Project to three months in prison after he was convicted of stalking a female tenant of the house.
