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Assault on Girl

Police seek to close case

Investigation officer claims no chance of identifying culprits

Muntakim Saad
The hope for justice for a college girl, who was sexually assaulted during an Awami League rally last year, has turned bleak as police have appealed to close the case claiming they could not identify the culprits.
On March 7, the 18-year-old girl on a Facebook post wrote that she was sexually assaulted on her way home from her college, allegedly by a group of men at the ruling party's rally marching towards Suhrawardy Udyan. The incident took place in the capital's Bangla Motor area.
The post created a stir on social media, prompting police to investigate the incident after the victim's father filed a case with Ramna Police Station the next day.
Bahauddin Farooqi, investigation officer (IO) of the case, in the final report submitted to a Dhaka court on September 9 last year, said, "The incident was found to be true... But there is hardly any possibility to identify or arrest the culprits in the near future."
The IO, an inspector of the detective branch (DB) of police, also pleaded to the court to accept the final report, adding that further investigation would be a "waste of valuable money and time of the government."
However, speaking to The Daily Star recently, Bahauddin, the third IO of the case, claimed they were unable to collect the footage of the exact location of the crime scene and that the CCTV footage of the adjacent area of the said location did not "properly reveal the incident".
In his report, Bahauddin said that the first two IOs of the case - Shafiqul Islam, inspector (operation) of Ramna Police Station and Dipak Kumar Das, inspector of DB (South) - "tried to collect" the CCTV footage of the area.
He wrote in his case diary on July 27 and August 10 that he could not collect the footage since it had already been "four to five months and generally a CCTV can store footage of three months at a time.”
However, it is the CCTV footage that was important to build the case and punish the culprits.
In the final report, the IO added that they took statements of four sergeants and three constables of the Ramna Traffic Zone, who were on duty in close proximity of the place where the incident took place. "All of them said they didn't see or hear of any such incidents, " the report read.
The girl refrained from giving a statement in court, saying she was busy with exams and that she had nothing more to say except what she had earlier told the investigators, according to the
report.
After the case was filed, the first IO investigated the case for only three days. It was then shifted to DB Inspector Dipak on March 11. After four months, the IO was changed again and Bahauddin took charge of the case on July 22.
Meanwhile, rights activists said such failures by police only give some sort of impunity to the perpetrators, leading to the recurrence of such incidents.
Bangladesh Mahila Parishad president Ayesha Khanom said it was unfortunate that the administration sometimes remains under pressure and thus, different kinds of manipulation may change the course of investigations.
She blamed the government's "lack of interest on the issues of violence against women".
"When the government is talking about zero tolerance against other crimes, and fighting against all odds, they are mysteriously silent about violenceagainstwomen," shesaid.
“Some 15 to 20 youths in white T-shirts - all aged between 25 and 30 -surrounded the girl and started teasing her. They pulled the girl and tore her uniform, ripping out a part covering the shoulder and two buttons. A traffic policeman rescued her and helped her board a bus to return home," read the statement of the case filed with Ramna Police Station on March 8 last year.
The traffic policeman who rescued the victim could also not be identified, the IO said.
Four days after the incident on March 11, Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan said that police collected the video footage and that the incident of some men pulling the scarf of the college girl was true. He assured punishment of the culprits after analysing CCTV footage.