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Published : 07 Jun 2026, 02:08 PM
A group of college students have gone to a Dhaka courtroom to hear the verdict in the rape and murder case of 8-year-old Ramisa Akter.
One of them asked, “Did the suspect's hand not tremble even once?”
The students, all Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) candidates from Government Shaheed Suhrawardy College, arrived at the Old Dhaka court premises on Sunday morning to witness the outcome of the widely discussed case.
Judge Masrur Salekin of the Dhaka Metropolitan Child Violence Suppression Tribunal delivered the verdict around 11:30am, handing down the death penalty to Sohel Rana and his wife Swapna Akter, who lived in the flat next to Ramisa’s family.
Mithila Bhuiyan Heera Moni, an eleventh-grade business studies student from the college, shared that she has a younger sister around Ramisa's age.
She said she had come after learning how the child had been killed during the charge-framing hearing.
"Did his hands never shake, killing a little girl like that?" she asked.
She also called on the state to ensure swift trials and exemplary punishment in all rape cases that come to light, adding that she wants proper justice, not “mob” rage.
Classmate Shakibul Hasan said he came on his own initiative, wanting to see what a person with such a warped mind actually looked like.
He believes “a twisted mentality, not clothing or behaviour, is at the root of rape”.
Fellow student Suraiya Tasnim said the argument that women invite assault through their dress falls apart entirely when the victim is a small child.
"An 80-year-old woman gets raped. Was she not covering herself?" she said. She pressed for sustained public awareness rather than a burst of attention that fades from the public eye.
"After a killing, there's a big fuss for a day or two and then it goes quiet," she said. "Building a decent Bangladesh starts with respecting women.”
Ramisa lived with her family in a flat in Dhaka’s Pallabi, while the suspects lived in a separate unit in the same building.
Police recovered the child’s body on May 19 and later detained Swapna from the residence before apprehending Sohel from Fatullah in Narayanganj.
During police questioning, Swapna described how Sohel had raped and killed Ramisa in the bathroom, then mutilated the body in an attempt to conceal the crime before cutting through the window grill and fleeing.
The case outraged people across Bangladesh. The verdict came 20 days after the killing.
