Barbarians stalk the land

Whose responsibility is it to provide her security and honour?

The ordeal in the life of 17-year old girl Laboni of village Harinakundu in Jhenidah has just begun. Fair complexioned Laboni was lured by her step-mother to accompany her in connection with shopping for sister's marriage to the capital city Dhaka and was reportedly sold to Hotel Capetown at Maghbazar in the city. For more than a week, the innocent girl was subjected to brutal sexual assault when the hyenas took their turns day in and day out. Laboni is now groaning in pain in the one stop crisis center at Dhaka Medical College Hospital.

Meanwhile, Laboni could take leave from her 'customers' on the plea of bringing medicine for her headache when she went to the emergency ward of the hospital and narrated her ordeal. Doctors say she will need lengthy treatment and even surgery to recover from the wounds inflicted on her vital organs.

On a complaint filed by women's activist group involved in stopping repression on women, police in the meantime has arrested the manager of the hotel but the owner of the hotel is still at large. With the arrest of the hotel manager as well asÊ Laboni's disclosure to the police, the sleazy activities in the hotel have come to public attention and this hasÊcaused near hysteria reportedly among some police personnel known to be the hotel owner Azad's beneficiaries.

Not an unusual andÊunfamiliar case in this country, this notorious hotel owner has allegedly greased a substantial group of the police administration by offering fabulous gifts and it has been learnt through newspaper reports, amassed crores of taka by allowing his mentors and godfathers enjoy the company of society girls in some plush houses in the city at Rampura, Banasree and Hatkhola areas. As his sex trade started unraveling, a section of the law enforcers has chosen to drag their feet. And sure enough such notorious hotel owners in the city and different parts of the country who have destroyed the lives of such unsuspecting young girls have evaded punishment because all these years they have been protected by their mentors in the political party and administration.

People now increasingly feel that unless the guilty are tried and convicted, such scamsters are likely to flourish with ever increasing strength. As women activist groups characterise, such incidents are symptomatic of the total lawlessness in what has become the rape capital of the nation. What is worse is the lack of outrage. Even with a veil of modernity in our outward manner, we still regard women as property and sex object.

Unhappily for women across the country, fear is a constant companion and rape is a stranger they may have to confront at any place, at any hour. It's a term that is being increasingly brought home to urban women especially garments workers and women employees in most workplaces as they strike out on their own in search of economic and social independence.

The nation learnt with similar trepidation about the incidence of gang rape on Nipa, a student of class VI of Muslimnagar High school of Baktabali village under Fatulla thana of Narayanganj district in the early part of June. After a nightlong brutal sexual assault on Nipa, the rapists killed her and threw her body in a corn field. In the face of agitation by the local public after Nipa went missing and the incidence of rape on Nipa came to light, local police retrieved her body. The police in the meantime has arrested Shukur (20),Kamal (21)and Dolly, a king-pin in this ghoulish incidence. Two more alleged criminals, it is reported by the police, are on the run.

Senough, the grotesque incident of gang rape on Afroza Begum,Êan insurance worker in Jaipurhat, Bogra was committed in broad day light when she was returning to Jaipurhat after collecting insurance premium from nearby villages with one of her colleagues, Pradip Mandal. The rapists, all village mastans, ambushed them on the way, tied Pradip in a house nearby and then they took turns to rape Afroza. To hide their involvement in this dastardly incident, they dramatised the whole incident implicating Pradip as the perpetrator. More shocking, the offenders by exercising their political clout on local union Parishad called an arbitration council meeting next day that passed a verdict like shaving the heads of Afroza and Pradip. Meanwhile the mastans also looted the premium money of one lakh and thirty thousand taka from Afroza.

Deeply humiliated, Afroza has vowed to take her life should she fail to get justice. Meanwhile the alleged criminals continue to hurl threats to her family with dire consequences should they decide to proceed with the case.

Women are definitely afraid to go to court or seek the protection of law enforcers because almost 80 per cent of women look at rape as a social stigma. That's the reason why only 10 per cent of such cases get reported. Undeniably true, society as a whole has a very conservative attitude towards women.Ê Despite a growing trend of migration to cities for education and work, society at large is still not accustomed to women on their own or with men who are not their fathers, husbands or sons.

Across the country, in offices and in colleges, in factories and in fields, and most shockingly in schools, sexual harassment and abuse are no longer the victim's secret. For a minor girl student Nazma Akhter, a student of class IX of R.K.D.S Girls' School at Sharankhola in the district of Bagerhhat, fear and intimidation gave way to action when in October last year Aynal (22), son of Abdul Haque of the same village in association with his criminal friends locked Nazma in a room and gangraped her. For months before that, Aynal had reportedly been subjecting her to lewd comments, innuendo-filled remarks and threats. While the alleged abduction of and sexual assault on Nazma came to light with some local ruling party leaders working as perpetrators of the crime, Nazma was whisked away to a hideout at Chittagong from where she came fleeing to Bagerhat. Ignoring the threats of local union Parishad chairman, Nazma's mother has filed a case in the local thana against Aynal and his associates Moulana Amir Ali Khan, Abdul Huq Shikder and Sohrab member.

True women today in many places of the country are emboldened because of the legal assistance, moral and economic support they are getting from many women's activist groups in the country. Nobody should call it a revolution but there is an awareness that sexual harassment or abuse is not acceptable and you don't have to submit to survive.

But truth is stranger than fiction. It is particularly when the abuser is a powerful person in the society and enjoys political backing and patronage that economic compulsions compel most women to sweep their cases under the carpet. Newspaper report published in a Bangla daily on June 20 revealed that the abuser of a mentally crippled domestic help in Manikganj could not yet be arrested by the police although a warrant of arrest had been issued against him. The alleged abuser Manzur Ahmed, it is reportedly learnt has been moving freely in the area with the powerful backing of a local MP.

Sadly enough, all hopes for the revival of the society and change of mindset to put the delinquent on trial or on road to justice seem to evaporate when people learnt with almost disbelief that a Madrassah Principal and a Superintendent of a Girls' Madrassah Hostel in Comilla and Sylhet, respectively, humiliated their students in the madrassah compound.

Shockingly, most of the rape incidences in the country these days relate to minors and even if the prosecution starts and the case advances in a court of law, it would be most shocking and intriguing to find that such minor girls, who were once sexually abused are again made to undergo harrowing cross-examinations in the court. How can such minors respond with clarity and in detail which even an adult would balk at answering? It should not take us too much time to realise that the trauma these minor girls or their parents must have undergone is unimaginable. If rapists accused of sexually abusing a minor girl or women cannot be punished because of insufficient legal grounds, flawed laws and shoddy investigations then it makes sense to enact new laws which are more stringent, scientifically advanced and fool-proof especially when the victim is a minor.

Recent advances in DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid)finger printing that matches microscopic strands of DNA, floating around an abuser's cells with the victim's clothes, hairs or any part of the body, can give clue to such cases and help identify the accused without going through an arduous and tortuous process. In the Indian city of Hyderabad, such DNA profiling machines are working quite successfully and scientists in that laboratory assert that almost half the cases they get cover rape and the other half to establish paternity.

In dealing things with transparency, people feel the need of setting up a special women's cell in the " state police" -- a long standing demand by the women's groups -- headed by a woman SP. Besides senior police officers have to be personally held responsible if crimes against women are not effectively controlled. Believably, the status of women and children is a perfect indicator of how civilised a country is. By all reckoning it is true that there has been an steady influx of women in a variety of professions and their contribution to the country's economy is quite significant. But the horrific attack on women in cities as well as in rural areas seems to negate the hope we are pinning in about progress and development.

Few countries have watched their social degeneracy drop so low as Bangladesh's. The criminality seems to be spinning out of control undermining the country's once good name uniquely attached to values. The blatant and brazen criminal acts have so shaken public confidence in the law enforcement agencies that many are even questioning the need for them in the country any more. What is most shocking is a return of the medieval mindset which continues to dominate our society Tragically true, the last vestiges of decency have left us abandoned among some beasts in the garb of humans.

Md Asadullah Khan is a former teacher of Physics, and Controller of Examinations, BUET.