Police accused of negligence of duty in gang-rape case

Turag police have been accused of neglecting their duty in extending support to the Garo girl who was gang-raped in Dhaka on Thursday.

The High Court has already issued a rule asking why the delay in recording the case of rape would not be declared unconstitutional and why actions would not be taken against police personnel responsible for the delay.

The bench of Justices Farah Mahbub and Kazi Md. Ejarul Haque Akondo also asked why the girl should not be paid compensation for the delay in processing the case. 

Five people dragged the Garo girl into a microbus when she was waiting for transport at Kuril to return home from work.

They raped her for one and a half hours before leaving her at Jasimuddin Road in Uttara.

According to the victim’s family, they went to Turag Police Station to file a case of rape as their residence was within its jurisdiction.

But the police turned them down around 4am on Friday saying the place of the occurrence was not within their jurisdiction.

The girl with her family reached Gulshan police station an hour later and got the same response.

At 6:30am they reached Vatara Police Station but were told they would have to wait as the officer-in-charge was not there.

The OC came in around 9:30am and the case was finally recorded around 12:30pm, more than eight hours after they first tried filing the case.

Right activists say police are duty-bound to give necessary support to anyone turning up at any police station with this sort of complaint.

Bangladesh Jatiya Mohila Ainjibi Samiti Executive Director Salma Ali told bdnews24.com: “It was police’s duty to send (the victim) to relevant police station along with a policewomen and with proper information.

“But this was not done in this case. Police did not carry out their responsibility.”

She thinks there was a lack of coordination among police stations.

“The girl had to move from one police station to another for filing a case due to the lack of coordination,” she added.

The law does not allow the police to keep a woman at a police station at night or in a facility where family police personnel are not available, according to Ali.

“But that did not happen to the girl on that night at the three police stations, including Turag police.”

On this matter, Turag Police OC Mahbubey Khoda said: “The duty officer advised them to go to Gulshan or Vatara police as the incident did not happen in an area under our jurisdiction.”

He, however, admitted that the victim was not given police escort.

“The girl came with 10-12 relatives and they had their own transport. They even phoned an acquaintance of them, who is an assistant commissioner of police while at the station,” said the OC.

He claimed that the victim’s family only wanted to file a case. “They did not ask for any other help, if they had, then we would have done that.”

Asked why the girl was not taken to the victim support centre, he said a case is needed to be filed before that was done and that’s why they referred the victim’s family to go to Vatara or Gulshan police.

The victim went to Turag police around 4am on Friday hours after the incident happened, then they went to the Gulshan police station.

Gulshan police referred them to Vatara police considering the location of the crime spot, but they gave her a police escort to Vatara.

“After hearing the details, we found that appropriate thing would be to file a case with Vatara police, so we had sent them there,” Gulshan police OC Md Sirajul Islam told bdnews24.com.

On sending the girl to the victim support centre, OC Islam said usually cases from outside Dhaka are sent to the victim support centre, but if the incident happens in the metropolitan area then a case needs to be filed first.

“Time would have been wasted if they were taken to the victim support centre without filing a case,” he added.