The trial in two cases for raping a newly-wed woman after abduction and keeping her husband confined by the activists of Bangladesh Chhatra League in the MC College dormitory in Sylhet began in the Divisional Speedy Trial Tribunal in Sylhet on Tuesday.
The trial began four years and about eight months after the incident that happened on September 25,聽2020.
The tribunal鈥檚 public prosecutor Abul Hossain said that the trial began through recording testimony of a prosecution witness, Hridoy Parvej.
The tribunal judge, Swapan Kumar Das, recorded Hridoy鈥檚 testimony.
鈥楾he tribunal set May 19 as the next date of examining prosecution witnesses,鈥� he said, adding that all the eight accused in the two cases were present in the court during the hearing.
The accused are Shah Mahbubur Rahman Rony, 25, Saifur Rahman, 28, Tarekul Islam Tarek, 28, Arzun Laskar, 25, Rabiul Islam, 25, Mahfuzur Rahman Masum, 25, Misbahul Islam alias Rajan Ahmed, 26, and Ayinuddin, 28, all activists of the MC College unit of the BCL.
On September 25, 2020, a group of BCL activists kidnapped the newly-wed couple from in front of the main entrance of the college at Tilagar in the city.
Later, the BCL activists raped the woman one after another in the college鈥檚 male student dormitory, keeping her husband confined in a room of the dormitory.
Being informed, Shah Paran police rescued the victims from the spot that night and admitted the woman to the one-stop crisis centre of Sylhet Osmani Medical College Hospital.
That night, the victim鈥檚 husband filed two cases with the police station against six identified and three unidentified persons and the police arrested the eight suspects later.
All the eight accused gave statements in the court admitting their involvement in the crime.
Among the accused, Rabiul Islam and Mahfuzur Rahman confessed that they assisted their fellow BCL activists in raping the woman and the rest six admitted that they had raped the woman one after another, officials at the court said.
On December 3, 2020, Shah Paran police inspector Indranil Bhattacharya, also the investigation officer in the case, submitted the charge sheets in the cases against the eight BCL activists.
The court officials said that, responding to a writ petition filed by one of the accused, a High Court bench on December 15, 2022 ordered to send the two cases to the speedy trial tribunal from the Woman and Children Repression Prevention Tribunal.
But, the procedure in the cases remained stalled for a long time due to unknown reasons, they said.
