Brutality unbound

Five days into her delivery of the second child, she went back to hospital with swollen eyes and severe injuries inflicted on her by her husband for dowry.

The victim, Fatema Akhter Liya whose head had to be shaven to stitch cuts could hardly talk when this correspondent met her at Tangail Medical College Hospital yesterday. Her two sons, including the new-born baby, were with her at the time.

Liya's father Tofazzal Hossain, of Matikata village in Nikrail union, married her off to Hafez Mohammad Shofiqul Islam, imam of Niklapara mosque and a shopkeeper at a nearby market, in 2010. 

At the time of marriage, her father gave three tolas of gold ornaments and sometime later Tk 10,000 amid much pressure from the husband for money.

From the beginning, Liya, now 25, saw suspicious behaviours of her husband Shofiqul Islam. He often didn't come home at night and seldom give her money for familial expenses.

Besides, there was always a demand for dowry from her husband. Whenever Liya protested, she faced torture. 

“We brought our daughter (Liya) home on several occasions but Shofiqul's parents took her back through village arbitration by elders,” said Liya's mother Halima Begum. 

She gave birth to her first baby a year after the marriage. The second son was born on November 30 through a caesarean section at a private clinic in Tangail town. 

On the night of December 6, a day after she went home, Shofiqul switched off the light of their room and attacked her all of a sudden with a sharp object.

“I couldn't see what it was in the dark. Hearing my screams, neighbours came to our house and rescued me,” Liya said at the hospital.

Her father filed a case with Bhuapur Police Station on Friday against Shofiqul, his father Hamid Miah and mother Rokeya Begum under the Women and Children Repression

Prevention Act, said OC AKM Kawsar Chowdhury.

The accused have been on the run since the incident and police have been conducting drives to arrest them, he added.