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Husband ‘tortured’, she got ‘rape threat’
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elsewhere and then six to seven of the cops started interrogating me. They were making obscene gestures and asking me how much I could pay them.”
“I was into the second month of my pregnancy. After I begged them to stop, all except one left.”
Tapashi said the man, who had introduced himself as a Special Branch officer from Dhaka, then slapped her and left the room.
She said her parents went to the police station the next day looking for her, but policemen told them that she was not there. After she shouted, her parents saw her. Only then, she was allowed to go.
Tapashi claimed that the law enforcers also forced her and her parents into signing on a blank piece of paper before setting her free. “They also threatened us that they will kill Mehedi if we shared anything with anyone.”
Police also had taken Mehedi’s signature on blank paper the previous night, she said.
After torturing him for three straight days, Mehedi was shown arrested as a suspect in the Latif murder case before a district court, she said.
Tapashi said she cannot stay at her home as police often visit it at night and threaten her.
“I’ve been hiding for the last two and a half months. Police even sent their informants to my relative’s house,” she said.
She also said SI Hiron went to her uncle’s home in Rajbari around 20 days back. As she tried to run away, she slipped over on the ground amid rain and had a miscarriage.
Contacted, OC Shahadat Hossain refuted the allegations, saying they did not torture anyone.
He said they took Mehedi to the police station for questioning over the murder. “The woman came to the police station, but she would not leave without her husband. At one point, we convinced her into going home,” he said.
SI Hiron could not be reached for comments.
Superintendent of Police in Rajbari M M Shakiluzzaman said the allegation by Tapashi was not true. “But if she files any complaints with us, we will investigate them,” he said.
The Daily Star is publishing the couple’s identities with her consent.

South Sudan risks return to war, UN warns
AFP, Juba
South Sudan risks a return to war, the United Nations warned yesterday, with outbreaks of interethnic violence and political infighting threatening to undo even the limited progress made in implementing its lumbering peace process.
The world’s newest nation has suffered from chronic instability since independence in 2011, including a brutal five-year civil war between forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and his deputy Riek Machar that cost almost 400,000 lives.
The 2018 agreement which ended the war has been bedevilled by bickering between rival parties.
Key provisions are yet to be implemented, with less than a year left before the country is due to hold elections.
“There is a real risk of going back to conflict,” Yasmin Sooka, chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan, told journalists yesterday during a visit to the country.
The failure to form a unified armed forces command -- a key component of the peace deal -- has created an environment in which violence remains rife, the UN said.
Thirty-two people, including children, were killed in armed raids in Jonglei state last month.
Political instability has added to the challenges, with Machar facing growing opposition within his own ranks, as top cadres complain about losing ground to Kiir’s party.
The pair’s shaky alliance faced a fresh threat in August when fighting erupted between rival factions of Machar’s party, leaving at least 32 people dead.
Machar said the clashes were aimed at derailing the formation of a unified army, which remains a major sticking point between him and Kiir, with the parties yet to agree on a power-sharing deal on the issue.
South Sudan has struggled with war, famine and chronic political and economic crisis since celebrating its hard-fought independence from Sudan in July 2011.
As discontent has deepened, some citizens have called for a peaceful public uprising to topple the current regime.
But the authorities have cracked down on protests, forcing activists into hiding.
“Members of South Sudanese civil society who met with the Commission said they are scared to discuss the human rights situation, for fear of retaliation by state security services with a track record of violently repressing the expression of political views,” the UN said in a statement yesterday.
“The lack of progress in implementing key provisions of the (peace deal)... contributes to the persistent insecurity and impunity in which human rights violations occur,” it said.