A SINGLE line on social media — ‘she should be gang-raped’ — rattled the halls of Dhaka University last month. It was not muttered in private, nor scribbled in secret. It was posted publicly about a young woman running for student union elections. The punishment? A six-month suspension. As if a brief holiday from class could neutralise the grotesque instinct embedded in those words. That suspension alone exposes the truth: Bangladesh still treats rape threats as mischievous speech, not as violence.
The country is already drowning in sexual violence. Between January and July of 2024, Ain o Salish Kendra documented 123 gang rapes. In 2023, more than 1,200 rapes were reported, including over 200 gang rapes. In 2022, the number was nearly 1,300. And these are only the reported cases — thousands more remain hidden under silence, shame and fear. Against this backdrop, to dismiss a gang-rape threat as ‘student behaviour’ is not leniency. It is complicity.
Appearing on Tritiyo Matra (September 29, 2025), ¶¶Òõ¾«Æ· editor Nurul Kabir made the matter plain: a rape threat is not speech but violence. He called the threat of gang rape ‘the most grotesque form of punishment’ a young woman can be subjected to in words. Violence does not begin with the act itself. The terror, humiliation and captivity inflicted by such threats take root instantly, lodging deep in the victim’s psyche and condemning her to live under a constant state of siege.
The word rape is not merely a four-letter word — it is, in all its essentialities, an acronym for two distinct vile acts.
RAPE = Rare Act Perpetrating Evil → when the crime is committed.
RAPE = Rare Act Predatory Evil → when it is threatened.
Both dimensions degrade dignity, inflict trauma and demand exemplary punishment. From the victim’s perspective, the distinction is largely academic. A girl told she ‘will be raped’ carries that menace into her classroom, her workplace, and her daily life. The trauma begins the moment the words are spoken and heard.
Editor Kabir reminded viewers that gang rape has become chronic in Chattogram and its surrounding districts, where cases are routinely reported but seldom punished. For him, the Dhaka University incident is not a one-off eruption but part of a national epidemic. The culture of impunity — where perpetrators are shielded by political patrons, police stall investigations and communities remain silent — ensures recurrence.
Kabir’s message was blunt: when gang rape becomes routine in peripheral districts, it emboldens threats in the capital. The menace directed at a university student is simply the urban echo of chronic violence tolerated in the countryside. He called this persistence of gang rape a national disgrace, exposing the moral bankruptcy of institutions that fail to protect women.
Bangladesh’s rape statistics are alarming enough, yet they almost certainly understate the problem. Studies by rights groups estimate that for every rape reported, several remain unreported due to stigma, fear of reprisal and lack of faith in the justice system. By comparison, India records nearly 32,000 rape cases annually, but even there experts estimate the true figure is at least double. In South Africa, often labelled the ‘rape capital’ of the world, police data record over 40,000 annual rapes. Bangladesh’s lower official figures should not mislead; they reflect silence, not safety.
Bangladesh’s Penal Code still treats the threat of rape as a minor or ambiguous offence, often subsumed under general categories of intimidation. By contrast, in India’s post-2013 reforms, Section 354D explicitly criminalises stalking and digital harassment as stand-alone offences. In the UK, the Malicious Communications Act and Online Safety laws treat threats of sexual assault as aggravated crimes. Bangladesh’s failure to update its statutes leaves the first stage of sexual violence — threats and intimidation — largely unaddressed.
In the US, threatening sexual assault is a felony punishable by five years in prison. In the UK, courts have handed down multi-year sentences for online rape threats alone. In India, after the 2012 Delhi gang rape, new laws made verbal or digital threats punishable by up to seven years. Saudi Arabia imposes long prison terms and corporal punishment. The European Union now treats online threats of sexual violence as a form of hate crime, carrying enhanced sentencing guidelines.
In Bangladesh, the law prescribes death for perpetrated rape yet treats rape threats with little more than token suspensions. If a Rare Act Perpetrating Evil (RAPE) warrants execution, why should a Rare Act Predatory Evil (RAPE) be dismissed with a mere slap on the wrist? Both arise from the same pathological instinct — one that bides its time, waiting for the chance to strike. Threatening to rape or gang rape is not idle speech but a live autopsy of criminal premeditation — a pathology at its predatory stage, as culpable as pointing a loaded gun with intent to kill.
In 2020, after nationwide protests, parliament amended the law to permit the death penalty for rape. Yet that change was more symbolic than systemic. As Kabir cautioned, so long as rape threats are dismissed as trivial, women remain unprotected at the very first stage of violence. The law may punish perpetrated rape with death, but it is long overdue to recognise predatory rape threats — the instinctive prelude to the act itself — as serious felonies, carrying sentences of 10 to 20 years in prison. That should be the norm. First-time offenders could face incarceration coupled with electronic monitoring through ankle devices, while repeat offenders should be subject to far harsher penalties. Only such measures can address both dimensions of RAPE.
Prison terms alone cannot curb the menace, especially in a system where money and political influence dilute punishment. Too often offenders walk free emboldened, not reformed. Punishment must follow them beyond prison walls. Electronic ankle monitors can restrict movements, prevent stalking and make their threat visible. For repeat offenders, sexual disarmament — chemical or surgical castration, practised in countries like Poland, South Korea, and parts of the United States — ensures permanent incapacitation. Bangladesh already accepts execution for rape; it should not shrink from measures that prevent repeat predation. A national registry of sexual offenders and threat-makers, accessible to schools, employers and communities, must also be established. Names and faces should remain permanently on record, making deterrence permanent, public and visible.
For decades, Bangladesh has trivialised sexual harassment with the euphemism ‘eve teasing,’ as if predation were harmless mischief. In reality, it is rehearsal for violence in broad daylight. In 2010, teenage girls like Rumana and Lovely took their own lives after relentless harassment dismissed as ‘teasing.’ Families still pull daughters from school, fearing humiliation more than lost education. Kabir’s outrage over chronic gang rapes in Chattogram reflects the same cultural tolerance of predation — tolerance that normalises terror until it erupts.
The Dhaka University student who typed his menace may never act, but his words already scarred the woman he targeted — and every woman who thought, that could be me next. Bangladesh must act before menace becomes massacre. The state must legislate, universities must enforce and communities must refuse to normalise. Until rape threats are punished as rape itself, every unpunished threat is not freedom — it is state-sanctioned complicity.
Globally, Bangladesh stands near the bottom in governance indices that measure honesty, accountability and human rights. At the same time, it ranks among the most outwardly religious nations, where rituals are visible in every corner of public and private life. The paradox is glaring: a society that proclaims its devotion to God is simultaneously overwhelmed by corruption, extortion, rape and gang rape.
Bangladesh already sits in the lowest fifth globally for corruption, dishonesty, immorality, truthfulness and extortion — and is now further disgraced by joining the ranks of nations notorious for both dimensions of rape. Yet it also projects itself as among the most outwardly religious societies. Everyday language illustrates this contradiction. Expressions such as ‘Assalamu Alaikum,’ ‘Bismillah-ir-Rahman-ir-Rahim,’ ‘Alhamdulillah,’ ‘Subhan Allah,’ ‘Mashallah,’ ‘Inshallah’ punctuate routine interactions. They should reflect compassion, integrity and sincerity. Instead, they often serve as hollow prefaces to transactions steeped in dishonesty. In this country, the dissonance between religiosity and moral decay is staggering.
This paradox of piety in tongue and vice in deeds is unsustainable. A society that tolerates such contradictions cannot aspire to dignity or global respect. Religiosity, op-eds, talk shows, or holiday-like suspensions will never deter either form of RAPE. What can deter them are stern measures: electronic ankle monitoring, long-term imprisonment, and — where warranted — death sentences. Unless both dimensions of rape are confronted with stern hands now, the nation risks an epidemic of impunity — where threats and assaults alike are shrugged off as routine.
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Dr Abdullah A Dewan is a former physicist and nuclear engineer at the BAEC and professor emeritus of economics at Eastern Michigan University, USA.
