Charge sheet accepted

A court here yesterday accepted the charge sheet pressed against five transport workers in the case for killing after rape law student Rupa Khatun on a moving bus in Tangail on August 25.

Judge Abdul Mannan of Women and Children Repression Prevention Tribunal in Tangail accepted the charge sheet, said advocate Ataur Rahman Azad, secretary of Tangail district unit of Manobadhikar Bastobayon Sangstha, which is providing support to the state side in the case.

The court fixed November 13 for the hearing for framing charges against the accused, he said.

Sub-Inspector Kaiyum Khan Siddique, investigation officer of the case and also in-charge of Araonkhola Police outpost in Madhupur, submitted the charge sheet to the Judicial Magistrate's Court in Tangail on October 15 and it was later sent to the Women and Children Repression Prevention Tribunal in Tangail, he added.

Police on August 25 recovered Rupa's body, then unidentified, from near Tangail-Mymensingh road in Tangail's Madhupur upazila.

Sub-Inspector Aminul Islam of Madhupur Police Station filed a murder case against unidentified criminals with the police station in this regard.

Seeing news in media, Rupa's family members went to Madhupur Police Station on August 28 and identified the victim from her photographs kept there.

The next day, law enforcers picked up five staff of a bus -- helpers Shamim, 26, Akram, 35, and Jahangir, 20, driver Habibur, 45, and supervisor Safar Ali, 55, from Madhupur.

The arrestees gave their confessional statements to the Senior Judicial Magistrate's Court in Tangail on August 29 and 30, admitting their involvement in the crime.