Rural community beats woman, cuts her hair as crowd cheers on

A village community has beaten and forcefully cut the hair of a poor woman who was falsely accused of theft by two men after she turned down their indecent proposals.

The incident happened on Thursday at Natima Kuripol village in Moheshpur Upazila, Jhenaidah.

The victim, Halima Begum, is the wife of local builder Abdul Majid. She was admitted the same day to Maheshpur Upazila Health Complex.

But police and hospital staff said she had been missing since Saturday afternoon.

Maheshpur Police Station OC Liakat Hossain said two men from the village, Shafik Ahmed and ‘Mintu’, had been making indecent proposals to Halima for some time and Halima had rejected them.

On Thursday, they attempted to rape her while she was at a neighbour’s place. When this attempt failed, they began to call out “Thief!”

The neighbours, the family of one Afez Uddin, joined in as they started beating her.

Later, they tied her up in a bamboo groove nearby. At one stage her hair was cut off.

Natima Government Primary School’s Assistant Teacher Anisur Rahman rescued her. She was sent to the health complex.

On Friday afternoon, police heard about the incident and went to the village. A case was filed at the Maheshpur Police Station.

Police arrested one of the participants in the torture, named ‘Khurshid’.

OC Liakat Hossain said he had heard that Halima had left the hospital on Saturday but did not know her whereabouts.