A woman’s dreadful night in Dhaka

A 29-year-old ailing woman came to Dhaka on 25 January evening to see her husband and two children. She reached Dhaka from a south-western district on that evening and rushed to Mohammadpur's Bosila area, where her family used to live. To her utter surprise, she found no one there as her family members left the place and moved somewhere else.

The woman used to live there with the family until four months ago when she became ill and went to her hometown. During her stay in her hometown, her husband also filed for divorce.

She rushed to meet her husband and children once she learned about the divorce only to find no one there.

She frantically searched for them at Bosila 40 feet area, Future Housing, Garden City Housing, Swapnodhara Housing and adjacent areas. Finding them nowhere and unreachable, she later decided to go back to her hometown the same night.

At 9:30pm, she hired a rickshaw from Tin Rastar Mor area towards Gabtoli bus stand. On the way to the destination, the rickshaw-puller diverted to different roads. Despite the woman repeatedly requesting him to take her to Gabtoli, the rickshaw-puller kept roaming around for three hours on the false promise of finding her husband. Around 12:30am he took her forcibly to an under-construction building at the Bosila Future Town, where the rickshaw-puller and four of his cohort gang-raped her. They stole her belongings including her phone and left her unconscious.

Hearing her scream, a security guard and a few others rescued her and took her to the hospital.

Later that night a case was filed with the Mohammadpur police station and five days after the incident police traced the stolen phone and arrested one Md Shahin Khan,19, from Mohammadpur's Chad Udyan Housing area.

Gleaning information from Shahin, police also arrested four other accused – Billal Hossain, 25, Al Amin Hossain, 26, Md Sabuj, 26, Rasel Mollah, 24 and Shafiqul Islam, 26, on 4 February from different parts of the capital and southern district Bhola.

Police have identified two other individuals to be involved in the gang-rape and they are on the run. Police also seized two rickshaws and mobile phones from their possessions.

At a briefing on Sunday, Dhaka Metropolitan Police's Tejgaon Division Deputy Commissioner HM Azimul Haque said they are aware of crime-prone areas in Mohammadpur and increased vigilance and night patrolling.

Tejgaon saw most mugging incidents in the capital, followed by Uttara and Mirpur, according to the Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) crime data from last year.

In 2022, around 33 snatching cases have been filed with different police stations in the Tejgaon Crime Division of DMP and 28 cases with police stations in Uttara, and 14 cases in Mirpur.

Mohammadpur has also become a hotspot for snatching and mugging crimes – which also falls under the Tejgaon crime division of DMP.