On August 12, a Hindu man Neel Madhav Saha was beaten and stabbed after he objected to the eve-teasing of his daughter. The incident took place at the Vishwa Vidyalaya railway station in Rajshahi in Bangladesh.
As per reports, a girl (named withheld) was en route her coaching centre when she was harassed by two men. The accused were identified as Miraj (aka Irfan Khan) and Prince. The victim is a student of the Rajshahi Govt. Women’s College.
She was rescued by a man named Emon, who intervened and helped her reach the coaching centre. On the same evening, Miraj and Prince thrashed the 46-year-old father of the victim, Neel Madhav Saha.
He was brutally stabbed with a knife and hit on the head with a hammer at around 7 pm on August 12, following a heated argument with the duo. While speaking to the media, Saha said, “They used to harass my daughter. Emon is the friend of the accused Prince. When Emon tried to stop the accused, he was intimidated.”
He informed, “Prince told me that we will have to pay him every month if we wanted to live. Else, we will have you get our daughter married to him.” When the victim’s father confronted him about his objectionable remarks, he was stabbed
“Miraj hit on my head with a hammer. They held me by my vest and legs…They wanted to take my life,” the victim’s father narrated. He named one Mamun, Farad, Reham, Akher and Robin for carrying out a deadly assault on him.
Initial Police inaction and later arrests in the case
The accused looted money from his pocket, besides the chain of his wife. With blood oozing out of his wounds, he went to the nearby police station. But it was in vain. He was admitted to the nearby hospital for immediate medical attention.
The victim’s father accused the hospital authorities and the police of laxity in taking action. When Saha first went to the Chandrima police station, the cops refused to register a case and asked him to receive treatment first.
Afterwards, they told him to visit the Motihar police stations. The cops refused to register a FIR and claimed that the case fell under the jurisdiction of the Railway Police Force. Sadly, they too refused to entertain him.
It was only after he addressed the media on August 17 that the Railway police registered the case against the accused. On the same day, the Rapid Action Batallion (RAB) arrested 3 people in connection to the case. They included Miraj (23), Farhad (27) and Akher (32).
Interestingly, Miraj and Farhad are members of the Chhatra League, the student wing of the Bangladesh Awami League. The duo are also followers of Ruhul Amin, who serves as the Vice-President of the Rajshahi Mahanagar Chhatra League.
“We are minorities and faced with all forms of coercion tactics. We will have to die or commit suicide or run to India. None has come forward to help us…We want justice. We want a free and fair rule of law. My daughter is not able to study. My wife is unable to restart her parlour,” he pleaded.
Even so, the incident took place at a time when Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina proclaimed that minorities in Bangladesh enjoy the same rights as the Muslim majority. However, with the Hindus in the country facing attacks regularly, Hasina’s anodyne proclamations appear nothing more than lip service aimed at containing growing resentment.
Hindu woman gang-raped, disrobed and killed in a paddy field
On July 29 this year, the dead body of a Hindu woman was discovered in a paddy field in the Kumar para area in the Bhervedi Union in the Dinajpur district of Bangladesh.
As per reports, the deceased woman was identified as Apo Rani Roy. She was returning to her husband’s home from her paternal house. Later, her disrobed body was found in a paddy field. A 10-year-old girl named Bipasha Rani Roy was also found in an unconscious state near the victim’s body.
On finding Apo Rani Rani in a lifeless state, the passersby called for help and informed the police. The cops reached the spot and recovered her body. The minor girl was then admitted to the Sub-Divisional Health complex.
According to the victim’s family, Alo Rani Roy has been gang-raped by unidentified criminals. They claimed that the victim was murdered to prevent her from identifying the accused men.
In a video shared by ISKCON spokesperson Radharamn Das, the 10-year-old could be heard saying, “My mother held my hand tightly. She begged the perpetrators to let me go. She kept on asking them: What have we done to you? They grabbed me by my neck and hit me on the head. I fainted but they believed that I was dead.”
“I don’t know what happened to my mother after that.” Later in the video, the minor girl was seen bursting into tears and asking, “What have we done to deserve this?” Apo Rani Roy is now survived by her husband and daughter.
