Garo girl gang-rape investigations a top priority: Police

Police claim to have been giving top priority to the investigations into the gang rape of a Garo girl in Dhaka.

“This type of incident has not occurred in Dhaka in recent past. It is heinous. This investigation is one of our top priorities,” Dhaka Metropolitan Police’s Deputy Commissioner Lutful Kabir told bdnews24.com.

Five youths dragged a Garo girl into a microbus and took turns in raping her on Thursday night.

The incident at Kuril Biswa Road happened amidst an outcry over failure to make any arrest in connection with the sexual assaults on several women on the Dhaka University campus last month.

Investigators have already collected CCTV camera footages from the shopping mall where the Garo girl works.

To identify the vehicle police are now trying to find whether any CCTV footages from where the girl was pulled inside the car or the place where she was dumped, are available.

Deputy Commissioner Kabir said that the police had spoken to victim’s family.

Investigators also spoke to owner and staff of the shop at the Jamuna Future Park shopping mall, where the girl worked as a sales-person, he added.

“Though the shop has no CCTV camera of its own, other cameras installed at the mall cover it and we have obtained those footages,” Kabir said.

The Garo girl, who was dragged from a bus-stop in front of the shopping mall, was raped inside the vehicle and dumped at the capital’s Uttara.

Her family filed a case with police on Friday.

The 21-year-old victim’s sister had told bdnews24.com on Friday that a man had visited her sister at the workplace last week with some foreign women and enquired about her residence, wage and family.

“She (the victim) identified the man as one among the five who raped her,” the sister said. “I think she’ll recognise the man from the shop’s CCTV footage.”

A forensic test conducted on the victim at Dhaka Medical College and Hospital (DMCH) on Saturday confirmed the rape.

“Evidence of rape has been found in preliminary test. We’ll give the final report within a week,” said DMCH forensic medicine department head Habibuzzaman Chowdhury.