A woman, 25, in Sreepur, Gazipur, has accused a paan shop owner named Sohrab Hossain of raping her in front of her two small children after offering her shelter. She said the incident happened on Tuesday night.
After failing to get justice from local traders, she tried to take her own life on Thursday afternoon in the Mawna Chowrasta area, with her children with her. Local people stopped her and took her to a nearby paan wholesale market.
Police went to the scene on receiving the news and spoke to the woman and local traders, and she described what had happened to her. She has filed a case at the police station under the Women and Children Repression Prevention Act.
The woman lives in a village in Sreepur upazila. After her husband left her, she had rented a room in Sreepur with her two children and begged in the surrounding areas to make a living.
The accused, Sohrab, is from Netrokona and runs a small paan shop in the Mawna Chowrasta area. He fled after the incident, so his response to the allegation could not be obtained. Police are trying to arrest him.
Describing what happened, the woman said her landlord evicted her on Tuesday night because she was several months behind on rent. She was then sitting with her two children under the Mawna Chowrasta flyover when the shopkeeper came and asked about her problems. Offering her shelter and money, he took her to a secluded spot east of the junction and raped her, she said. “My three-and-a-half-year-old son understands everything,” she said. “He pulled him from my arms and did the bad thing to me. I cried, but he didn’t let me go.”
After the incident, she said, she told local traders and asked for justice, but instead they handed her 500 taka and told her to leave.
“A rape case has been filed naming one accused,” Sreepur police station officer-in-charge Mohammad Shahinur Alam said on Friday morning. “Efforts are under way to arrest him. The process of the woman’s medical examination is under way.”
At the paan market on Thursday afternoon, the woman was seen holding one of her children, with three members of Sreepur police present. She repeatedly described what had been done to her and asked for justice. At one point police detained two people at the scene and took them away, and also took the woman with them.
Md Shafiqul, a vegetable trader, said a man named Sohrab ran a paan shop next to the wholesale market and that the shop is now closed.
The officer-in-charge said local people had caught the two people and handed them to police. After questioning, they were shown as arrested under section 54 and sent to court.
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বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report