Five labour leaders ordered into prison over rape on moving bus in Tangail

Five more men have been ordered into prison on charges of gang-raping a woman on a moving bus at Tangail.

Tangail’s Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Hakim Hamidul Islam rejected their bail pleas on Wednesday.

They were ‘Military Selim’, ‘Selim’, ‘Jalu’, ‘Ilias’ and Abdul Latif Munshi, known as worker leaders at Modhupur.

The driver of the ‘Binimoy Paribahan’ bus, Habibul Rahman Nayan, and his two associates ‘Rezaul’ and Abdul Khalek Bhutto are already in judicial custody and have confessed to being involved.

The 23-year-old woman was headed to Gazipur on Apr 1 after visiting a relative at Tangail’s Dhanbarhi. She got on the bus with no other passengers from Dhanbarhi bus stand.   

She was gagged and restrained as the driver and his associates took turns in raping her. Locals rescued her after they threw her off the bus on the Modhupur-Mymensingh road.

The victim, a garment factory worker, started a case with Dhanbarhi police against nine including six worker leaders who she said tried to cover up the crime.

The other leader she accused is absconding.