BANGLADESH: FOUR TO DIE IN COLLEGE GIRL RAPE, MURDER CASE

July 9, 2013: In Bangladesh, a Lalmonirhat court sentenced four youths to death for killing a college girl after rape in Sadar upazila in 2008.
The death sentence awardees are Halim Badsha, Ataur Rahman, Rashedul Islam and Mahbubur Rahman. They all are from Sakurpar village in the upazila.
District and Sessions Judge Osman Haider pronounced the verdict at a crowded courtroom at noon. Earlier, the court had recorded statements of eight prosecution witnesses, including Dr Sirajul Islam of Lalmonirhat Sadar Hospital, as he performed an autopsy of the victim’s body.
According to the case statement, the four youths picked up Parvina Akhter, 18, a student of Rajarhat Degree College in Kurigram and daughter of Doctor Salim Uddin of Sakurpar village in Lalmonirhat Sadar upazila, while she was returning home from a tutor’s house at the same village in the afternoon on January 10, 2008.
The gang took the girl to a bamboo cluster at the village and strangled her after rape. They later dumped the body into a pond at adjacent Ratidhar village.
Locals found the body floating on the pond and informed the police, who recovered the body and sent it to Sadar Hospital for autopsy. According to the autopsy report, Parvina was gang-raped before being killed.
Following a case filed by Parvina’s elder brother Shafiqul Islam with Sadar Police Station on January 12, police arrested Halim Badsha on January 14. As per confessional statement of Halim, police recovered victim’s dress, books and shoes from the bamboo cluster at Ratidhar village. The law enforcers arrested the rest three in a week. (Sources: thedailystar.net, 10/07/2013)