Woman ‘gang-raped’ in moving bus in Tangail in northern Bangladesh

A woman has been allegedly gang-raped on a running bus by the driver and his two assistants in Tangail’s Modhupur.

Police arrested the three men after the husband of the victim, a readymade garment factory worker, filed a case.

The woman was raped by the three on Friday morning in the ‘Binimoy Paribahan’ bus, which was heading for Dhaka from Modhupur’s Dhanbarhi, said Dhanbarhi police OC Md Majibar Rahman.

He said the accused – driver ‘Nayan’ and his assistants ‘Rezaul’ and Abdul Khalek – were arrested later in the afternoon in the Dhanbarhi bus stand area.

The three, who are among the nine accused in the case, were presented before a Tangail court on Saturday morning.

The 23-year old victim was admitted to Tangail Medical College Hospital for medical examination, the OC added.

The hospital’s gynaecologist Dr Rehena Parvin told bdnews24.com that the examination was complete and they were waiting for the report.

The victim’s husband said his wife had gone to a relative’s house at Dhanbarhi from Gazipur on Thursday. She boarded the bus to return home to Gazipur on Friday morning.

Quoting his wife, he said there were no other passengers in the bus when it started moving.

Later, the three took turns in raping her after tying her up in the moving bus, he told bdnews24.com.

He said locals rescued her after they threw her off the bus on the Modhupur-Mymensingh road.

Friday’s incident comes amidst a furore over the ‘rape’ and murder of college student Sohagi Jahan Tonu in Comilla last month.

Two sisters were also allegedly gang-raped overnight in Lakshmipur’s Kamalnagar after being dragged to an abandoned house by five men on Mar 29.

A court in 2014 had ordered life imprisonment for a driver and his assistant for raping a girl in a moving bus on the Dhaka-Aricha highway in Manikganj in early 2013.

That incident had taken place amid an international uproar over the gang-rape of a 23-year-old paramedical student in a moving bus in the Indian capital of New Delhi in December 2012.

The student later died due to her injuries.

In May last year, five youths had dragged a 21-year old Garo girl onto a microbus and taken turns to rape her in Dhaka’s Kuril Biswa Road.

This incident had occurred amid an outcry about the failure to arrest the culprits responsible for sexual assaults on several women in the Dhaka University campus during Bengali New Year celebrations in April same year.