Assault on Female RMG worker in moving bus
A Manikganj court yesterday convicted and sentenced a bus driver and its conductor each to rigorous imprisonment (RI) for life for raping a female garments worker in a running bus on the Dhaka-Aricha highway last year. The two convicted rapists are: bus driver Dipu Mia, 30, son of Astabor Ali of Gurki village, and conductor Kashem Ali, 28, son of Bindu Miah of Dulapara village in Manikganj.
The court also imposed a fine of Tk. 50,000 on each of the convicts; if they default, they will undergo RI for three more years.
In addition, Dipu Miah was handed down five years’ rigorous imprisonment and will have to pay a penalty of Tk. 5,000 on the charge of attempting to rape the girl. The driver will have to serve a year more in jail if he failed to pay the fine.
However, Dipu Miah’s imprisonment on the two separate charges will run concurrently.
The district judge of the Women and Children’s Repression Prevention Tribunal, AKM Mostafa Dewan, pronounced the verdict in the presence of the convicts.
With lawyers, journalists, observers, security personnel and staff in the courtroom and people across the country eagerly waiting for the verdict, the judge took his seat at 11:14am, 10 minutes before the accused was brought in the dock. After hearing that they had been awarded life-term rigorous imprisonment, both the convicts were thunderstruck as they had not expected it.
The female garments worker was raped in a running bus on the Dhaka-Aricha highway by the driver and conductor and later thrown out of the vehicle at Manora in Manikganj Sadar upazila on the afternoon of January 24 (a Thursday) in 2013.
According to the prosecution, the girl got on their minibus around 1:30pm on the day from Nabinagar bus stand to go to her village in Pangsha upazila of Rajbari. The driver and the conductor told all passengers except the girl to get down from the bus just before reaching the bus stand, saying that the bus was out of service. But the girl did not get off the bus even after all the other passengers had got down as she did not know that the last stop was Manikganj. Taking advantage of this, the driver continued driving, assuring her that they would take her to Paturia.
Bus conductor Kashem Ali raped her first, the driver followed later. Then they drove back and dropped the girl off near the district fisheries office at Manora Bridge beside the Dhaka-Aricha Highway and fled. Locals called the police when they found the girl crying beside the road.
The police rescued the girl from the Manikganj bus terminal in the afternoon on that day and sent her to the Manikganj Sadar Hospital in the evening for medical tests.
That night the victim lodged a case with the Manikganj Sadar police station under Sections 9(1)/30 and 9(4)(Kha) of the Women and Children Repression Prevention Act, 2003, accusing the bus driver Dipu Mia and conductor Kashem Ali.
After hearing about the rape, local bus workers assaulted the driver, Dipu Miah, at the Manikganj bus stand and turned him over to the police. Rapid Action Battalion-4 (RAB-4) personnel arrested bus conductor Kashem Ali from Nabinagar in Ashulia.
The duo later confessed to having raped the garment worker. Senior judicial magistrate Sheikh Md Muzahid-Ul-Islam recorded their confessional statements on January 25. They were then sent to Manikganj Central Jail.
The officer-in-charge (investigation) of Sadar police station, Md. Sahidur Rahaman, who is also the investigation officer of the case, submitted the charge-sheet at the senior judicial magistrate’s court on February 6, 2013, after carrying out an investigation for 16 days.
The incident had sparked a public movement across the district. Many socio-cultural organisations, rights activists and political and women activists had formed human chains, organised road blockade programmes, staged a symbolic hunger-strike and taken out processions, seeking capital punishment for the rapists. The rape victim, also the plaintiff in the case, expressed her instant reaction to the verdict and said, “We have got proper judgment.” The husband of the victim’s sister also expressed satisfaction over the verdict.
Minutes after the verdict was pronounced, public prosecutor of Manikganj judge’s court, Advocate Abdus Salam, expressed his profound satisfaction over the verdict, saying that justice has been established. No lawyer of the accused was present when the verdict was declared.
Meanwhile, Bangladesh National Women Lawyers’ Association (BNWLA) executive director Advocate Salma Ali, who was present at the courtroom during the judgment, said, “The verdict has established justice on the one hand and, on the other, it reflects the people’s expectations.”
This incident occurred during the global furore over a similar gang-rape in a moving bus of a 23-year-old paramedical student in India’s capital New Delhi.
Courtesy of The Independent
