Why aren’t the rapes stopping?
A young couple was sitting by the playing field in Sakhipur, Tangail, when five young men came along on their motorbikes, picked them up and took them to the nearby forest. There they tied up the boy and three of them raped the girl in front of him. The other two recorded the entire incident on video. It is clear from the Prothom Alo report on this incident that rape has become all too easy and commonplace in Bangladesh. Most of the perpetrators are not caught. Even if cases are filed against them, they manage to avoid trial and punishment.
In the Sakhipur case, the police managed to arrest one of them rapists. He told the police that the girl was the neighbour of three of the rapists, but they picked her up because she was having an affair with a boy from another village. This confession shows the mentality of the rapists. Worse still, they felt entirely safe about raping the girl, confident of getting away with the heinous crime. Such things can only happen where there is a lack of justice.
The problem gets worse due to the weakness in implementing the law and the lengthy legal process. The law enforcers adopt a derogatory attitude towards the rape victim, questioning her moral character. And so it is difficult to prove the rape beyond doubt in the court. Even the general public has the propensity to frown down at the rape victims.
Thus, despite stringent laws, rapes continue unabated. This month alone there were reports of a mother and daughter being raped in Narsingdi, a grade three girls being raped and killed in Chauddagram, Comilla and other such brutal rape crimes. According to an Ain O Salish Kendra report appearing in Prothom Alo on 19 January, 3587 women were raped over the past five years in Bangladesh and 278 of them were killed after being raped. Even more despicable is the fact that 86 per cent of the victims were children and young girls. The victims are predominantly girls of the 6 to 12-year-old age bracket. In the first 18 days of January this year, there were reports of 23 rapes and attempted rapes, among which 15 victims were children. They are often killed after rape. And many incidents of rape are not even reported. While Ain O Salish Kendra reported that 3587were raped in 5 years, over 19,000 rape-related cases were filed with the police, that is, on average, 11 rape cases a day. But the number of accused in rape cases is much less. Only 3 per cent are sentenced to punishment in the cases that have been tried.
Unless this vacuum of justice is addressed, it will simply not be possible to stop this unabated crime of rape.