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A COURT IN Bangladesh sentenced 16 people to death today over the murder of a 19-year-old female student burnt alive in April that provoked outrage across the country.
Nusrat Jahan Rafi was doused in kerosene and set on fire after refusing to withdraw a sexual harassment complaint against the head teacher of the seminary she attended.
“The verdict proves that nobody will get away with murder in Bangladesh. We have the rule of law,” prosecutor Hafez Ahmed told reporters after the verdict.
Rafi was lured to the rooftop of the seminary where her attackers pressed her to withdraw the complaint she had filed with police.
When she refused, she was tied up, doused in kerosene and set on fire.
She suffered burns to 80 percent of her body and died in hospital five days later on April 10.
Her death triggered outrage and also highlighted a rise in sexual harassment cases in the South Asian country of 165 million people.
Protesters in the capital Dhaka staged days of demonstrations seeking “exemplary punishment” for the killers.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had promised to prosecute all those involved.
Rafi had gone to police in late March to report the sexual harassment, and a leaked video shows the local police station chief registering her complaint but dismissing it as “not a big deal”.
At the time police had said that one of the 18 people initially arrested had accused the school’s principal of ordering the attack.
The teacher “told them to put pressure on Rafi to withdraw the case or kill her if she refused”, senior police superintendent Mohammad Iqbal, who led the investigation, had told AFP.
Iqbal had also said that some of those arrested were Rafi’s classmates and that they had tied her up with a scarf before setting her on fire.
“The plan was to pass the incident off as a suicide. But it fell through after Rafi managed to come downstairs while on fire because the scarf burnt and freed her hands and feet,” he said.
Activists say the murder exposed a culture of impunity surrounding sex crimes against women and children, and that fact that those who report harassment often suffer a backlash.
Prosecutions are also rare in cases of rape and sexual assault.
After the murder, Bangladesh ordered some 27,000 schools to set up committees to prevent sexual violence.
Defence lawyers said they would appeal against the high court verdict.
The case was fast-tracked with the hearing taking only 62 days.
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Animals
@The number 78: Animals don’t do that.
@Peter McMahon: Some do. But they don’t have the self awareness of human beings to know right from wrong. These individuals are pure evil. I feel sick to my stomach thinking about this. I’m so sorry for her. Sigh.
@The number 78: careful! The new intolerant Ireland and Charlie’s hate speech laws might determine your utterances as hateful.
They should get the same fate, pure skum.
This is absolutely sickening. That poor young woman. The pain and terror she must have felt are awful to contemplate.
Animals…. the poor child
sickening what they did to this Girl, but also shows the death penalty is no deterrent.
@The long walk home☘️: you are right but they will not do it again
@The long walk home☘️: How can they re-offend if they are dead.
@Josh Hanners: I think he/she means that it’s not a deterrent to commit the crime in the first place
@The long walk home☘️: how does it show that a death penalty is no deterrent? This appears to be the first time that sentence was given in a sexual harassment case . Otherwise why would protesters have wanted this to be an exemplary case? The fact that it was fast tracked was to show that they will now take these cases seriously.
@Marie Broomfield: Tbe poor girl
@Marie Broomfield: The poor girl was brutally murdered , that was the vicious crime.
2019 and this is still happening, hard to fathom.
I don’t believe in the death penalty, however one can certainly argue it’s case for these psychos that did this
Imagine if that was the law here.murder someone and its bye bye for you as well.
@Seriously stunned: it would mean there would be a state paid murderer walking the streets. It wouldn’t stop crime and we would have to leave the EU.
@Seriously stunned: I don’t want my country to execute anyone.
The Death Penalty is never the answer.
@Bob Earner: You again Bob? What a silly and glib response.
Don’t you think they’re getting off lightly by being given the death penalty?
Good! burn them
have your say