Bangladesh father alerts all after 7-year-old girl’s alleged ‘rapist, murderer’ is arrested

Last Friday was like any other day for the family living in an apartment at Banagram in Wari, but it turned out to be the cruelest for them when they found the 7-year-old member’s body in an empty flat on an upper floor.

The girl's father is a businessman in Nawabpur. He bought the apartment in February and moved in there with his family.

She was the youngest among his four children and a nursery student of a school in the neighbourhood.

After taking permission from her mother, the girl left her apartment on the fifth floor on Friday evening to play with other children of the building as she would do every day.

The family began to look for her as she had remained missing for hours.

They called police after they found her blood-stained body lying on the floor with a rope around her neck.

A forensic doctor said she was raped before being strangled.

Police arrested the suspected murderer and rapist, Harun-or-Rashid, in his home district Cumilla on Saturday night and said he had admitted to the crimes. 

Harun-or-Rashid is accused of murdering a 7-year-old girl after raping her in Dhaka's Wari on July 5, 2019.

Harun lived in a flat on the seventh floor of the building with his cousin at Wari and worked in his cousin’s shop at Thatari Bazar.

Speaking at a news conference on Sunday, the victim’s father said his daughter went out to play with a daughter of Harun’s cousin. Her body was found in an empty flat on the eighth floor.

The father demanded maximum punishment, which is death for murder after rape, for Harun within the shortest possible time. 

“And I would like to tell the people, who have daughters, children, please think how you will keep them safe from such perverted, beastly behaviour. I could not save my daughter,” he said.     

The girl murdered after rape at Dhaka's Wari on July 5, 2019 was the littlest among the four children of her parents.

He was out to offer prayers at a local mosque when the girl went out to play with the girl on the seventh floor telling her mother that she would be back in 10 minutes, according to the father.

“The 10 minutes passed and I returned home after prayers but could not find her…Seeing her murdered was a near death experience for us…We are devastated,” he said. 

The mother was refusing to drink or eat after losing the girl, he said.

“She (the mother) is crying all the time holding her (the girl’s) books, clothes,” the man said.

He urged the media to continue writing on such incidents so that these do not remain hidden.