Man sentenced to 60 years in jail over abduction, rape of ninth-grader in Joypurhat

A Joypurhat court has slapped a man with a 60-year jail-term on charges of abducting and raping a ninth-grader.

The sentence was passed by Joypurhat District Women and Child Repression Prevention Tribunal Judge Md Rustam Ali, penalising Momin Akand, 26, son of Mamun Akand of the upazila’s Bambu Union, in a three-year old case.

State lawyer Firoza Chowdhury said Momin was handed a 30-year jail term and fined Tk 700,000 on the charge of abduction and faces an additional seven years in prison if he fails to pay the fine. He was sentenced to another 30 years in prison and fined another Tk 1 million for raping the victim will have another five years added to his sentence for failing to pay the fine.

According to the case dossier, Momin Akand had been frequently harassing the girl before he and several of his accomplices spirited her away on a microbus from in front of her school on Sept 3, 2018.

Later, the group raped her.

The father of the victim filed a case with Joypurhat police on Sept 5 of that year. The police rescued the girl three months later.

At the end of the investigation, police submitted a chargesheet to the court in December 2018 showing Momin as the only accused in the case.