Violence Against Women Amid Covid-19: Cases keep on piling up
Only three days into their marriage, on March 26 this year, Shanu Khatun's husband Abdul Motaleb and his family members threw acid on her face over dowry.
Shanu can no longer breathe through her nose as lower part of her face including the nose is now disfigured.
The incident took place at Modhupur village in Raiganj upazila of Sirajganj.
While the public medical facilities have been providing limited services amid the situation caused by Covid-19 pandemic, Shanu's poor family has not been able to afford the reconstructive surgeries she requires.
In the meantime, ten months after the attack that shook the young woman's life to the core, the law has yet to bring the perpetrators to book.
After Shanu's father Ashraf Ali Pramanik filed a case with Raiganj Police Station against five offenders, police on December 1 submitted a charge sheet, mentioning only two names -- that of her husband and the owner of an acid store.
Shanu's family rejected the charge sheet and got tangled up in a complicated legal battle where the police claimed that only two people's names had been mentioned in the initial complaint of the case.
Violence that was perpetrated on Shanu is quite common in Bangladesh and such brutal crimes against women are alarmingly on the rise amidst the pandemic months when many of the male members of a family are spending more time at home.
It has always been extremely difficult for victims of gender violence to seek justice. But limited resources and backlog created in the justice system during the months of restrictions due to the pandemic have made the situation even worse for justice seekers.
In Atghoria upazila of Pabna, 11 months have gone by since a mentally challenged teenage girl was raped by two men, but police are yet to submit any charge sheet in the case.
Her family members said police had arrested both the accused -- Md Abdul Karim, 36, the key accused, and Md Bellal Hossain, 45 -- after her mother filed a case against them. But Bellal was later released on bail.
Her mother said she had been making frequent visits to Atghoria Police Station, seeking police action. But instead, the "investigation officer" at the police station demanded Tk 10 thousand from her for getting DNA tests of the arrestees done from Dhaka, she alleged. "I've already paid Tk 9 thousand for the DNA test."
Denying the allegation, Asif Md Siddikul Islam, officer-in-charge of the police station, said police bear investigation expenses from government funds.
Submitting of the charge sheet had been delayed, as it took longer to get the DNA reports due to the pandemic, he said, adding that they now have the reports in hand and they would soon file the charge sheet.
Advocate Shahina Parveen, project coordinator of 'Amrai Pari', said the law allows a maximum of 180 days to dispose of a case filed for violence against a woman.
But justice to the victims is being delayed, as investigations into most cases are not completed within the stipulated time, she added.
In a more complicated situation, the family of Brishti Khatun -- an underage victim of violence in Tarash upazila of Sirajganj -- is now unable to take any legal action against her husband after his persecution resulted in her taking poison for committing suicide.
At the time of the marriage in 2019, Brishti, now 16, was a fifth-grade student at a school. Taking advantage of their unregistered marriage, her husband Abdul Momin, from Deshigram village in the same upazila, now denies the marriage.
Brishti is now suffering from paralysis due to the ingestion of poison and her husband remarried couple of months ago, said her mother Bacha Khatun.
Advocate Shahina Parveen of Amrai Pari said 284 women were victims of violence in four upazilas of Pabna and Sirajganj this year amid the pandemic situation.
Till date, none of their cases have been disposed of, she added.