A teenage daughter of a deceased during the July-August mass uprising reportedly killed herself in the capital’s Adabor area Saturday night, 39 days after she was raped in Patuakhali district on March 18.
The victim, 17, was found hanging from a ceiling fan in her bedroom at their rented home in Dhaka at about 10:00pm on Saturday and was rushed to Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College where doctors declared him dead, the police and the deceased’s family members said.
The victim is a higher secondary student at a college in Dumki upazila in Patuakhali.
Referring to circumstantial evidence, Adabor police station officer-in-charge SM Zakaria said that they primarily thought that the incident was a case of committing suicide.
He said that an unnatural death case was filed with his police station on Sunday and the body was handed over to her family after conducting post-mortem examination.
On March 18, she was raped at a location under Dhumki upazila in Patuakhali when she was on her way to her maternal grandfather’s house after offering prayers at her father’s grave at their ancestral home in Dumki Upazila.
The victim’s father was shot at Mohammadpur in Dhaka on July 19, 2024 during the student movement against discrimination. He died at Dhaka Medical College Hospital after 10 days.
¶¶Òõ¾«Æ· Correspondent in Patuakhali, quoting the victim’s paternal grandfather, reported that she and her mother were scheduled to meet the deputy commissioner on Sunday morning for government assistance as a family of July uprising martyr.
‘I made a phone call to her mother on Saturday to ask about the meeting with DC for assistance. She replied that they would arrive in Patuakhali on Sunday. Later, we came to know that my granddaughter was no more,’ the victim’s grandfather said.
The victim is survived by her mother, a 10-year-old sister, and a seven-month-old brother.
On March 19, the victim filed a case with Dhumki police station under the Women and Children Repression Act 2000 accusing Md Sakib Munshi, 19, and a 17-year-old boy of raping her.
The police later arrested the duo and they were sent to jail. Â
Different rights organisations, including the Bangladesh Mahila Parishad and the Naripokkho, expressed deep concern and dissatisfaction over the incident and demanded exemplary punishment for the rapists.
Naripokkho in its statement claimed that the victim faced threats that her obscene photos and videos would be circulated on social media.
It alleged that the police initially did not want to record the case.
Patuakhali district superintendent of police Md Anowar Zahid denied the allegation and said that they had arrested the accused youths within two days.
He said that the two arrested youths had given confessional statements before a court in Patuakhali and were now in jail.
