Youth jailed for six years in 2017 rape of two children

A tribunal in Dhaka has sentenced a youth to six years in prison under the Children Act over the rape of two children in the capital’s Dakkhinkhan in 2017.

Judge Begum Shamsunnahar of the Fifth Women and Children Repression Prevention Tribunal delivered the verdict on Thursday.

The convict, Sifat Bhuiyan, now 18, was a college student. He was 14 years old at the time of the crime. 

“The allegation of rape against the accused has been proven. The maximum sentence in the law for this crime is life imprisonment, but the accused is a child and there are some provisions against harsher punishment of the children in the law,” said Prosecutor Ali Asgar Swapan.

“The court sentenced him to six years in jail without parole and fined Tk 10,000 considering the provisions in the act. He will have to spend an additional two months behind bars if he fails to pay.”

Sifat was sent back to the Adolescent Development Centre after the hearing in the court. 

The convict’s aunt filed the rape case against him with Dakkhinkhan Police Station in 2017. The woman said she had left her two children at home while visiting her father-in-law in hospital on Jun 19, 2017. She returned home in the afternoon but one of her daughters told her a week later on Jun 25 that they were raped by Sifat.  

Police charged Sifat in the case after completing the investigation on Sept 20, 2017.