Victims harassed over lewd videos

Several victims of sexual abuse in Kushtia are forced to confine them inside the house as some miscreants are harassing them and their families after obscene videos showing a school teacher sexually assaulting female students and other women have been circulated.

Some had even extorted money from the affected families by threatening to further spread the lewd video clippings.

One of the families was forced to leave the area while several of the victims are left with no other option than ‘house confinement’, said local residents.

Police is yet to seize those videos though it had been on circulation for nearly a month-and-a-half now. Guardians have alleged police took no strong steps to prevent selling of those offensive videos in local CD stores.

A case was filed on Jul 7 under the Pornographic Control Act against the teacher Helal Uddin Panna and three others with Kushtia Model police.

Helal is a Mathematics teacher in Kushtia’s Ideal Secondary School.

Other accused in the case are- Engineers Alimuzzaman alias Tutul, Shoriful Islam alia Sajal and Hasanuzzaman Hasan. All of them hail from Haripur village under the district’s Hatsho Haripur Union.

According to the case details, Helal forcefully took a snap with one of his female students who had come to him for private tuitions last month, but the matter somehow became public.

Later relatives of that student, locals and several journalists allegedly beat him up over the incident. He has been on the run since then.

Infuriated over the incident, locals again attacked his house and took his laptop and cell phone to a computer store for examining whether he had more illicit photos.

Many more similar videos and photos, captured in hidden cameras, revealed the teacher sexually assaulting students and women of different ages. Since then, these videos have been in circulation in the area.

Among the accused only Hasanuzzaman was arrested though he was not seen in the footages.

Locals alleged Monirul Islam Mono and his nephew Dulal Uddin had not been accused in the case though “they were seen in the video footages.”

Both of them wield considerable influence in area, local alleged.

Several political, cultural and human rights organisations have formed human chains on several occasions to press for the arrest of the culprits and to protest the incident “that could have been avoided”.