Suicides

The reports on a 16 year old schoolgirl's suicide stated that “Police strangely claim she committed suicide”. Whereas the victim's mother claims that prior to her daughter's death she had identified and accused a 24 year old man (one whose unwanted proposals had been turned down) of pouring kerosene on her, striking a match and then fleeing. Clearly, this was no suicide or eve teasing.
It makes me wonder if eve teasing, according to the papers and police is actually a convenient euphemism for harassment. The media calling it 'eve-teasing' significantly lessens the gravity of the situation.
A paper states that harassment or “eve teasing” is a regular occurrence for women and girls.
Such acts comprise of many dimensions of torture and unlawful activities which are defined as punishable offence under the laws of Bangladesh. Criminal intimidation / threat, abetment of suicide, etc have been identified as punishable offences in the Penal Code and the Women and Children Repression Prevention Act 2003.
The recent High Court Order (2009) against harassment covers all levels of abuse and exploitation which have also not been considered during reporting.
The child protection system in Bangladesh must be strengthened and stringent laws against violence enforced to make sure that this does not ever happen to another single child.
A student, gifted dancer and child of 16, who dreamt big dreams, should never have suffered such a fate. I hope the government takes a firm stand to ensure that justice is done.

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Teasing the young tender-hearted girls is increasing sharply day by day. The outcome is the serial suicide of many innocent girls. Naturally today the parents of the girls are very much worried. They may also suffer from inferiority complexity.
Teasing is not anything new in our society. It was present in this country even a few decades ago. It would be very difficult to find out how many girls have committed suicide so far. But with the passage of time, the nature of teasing has changed a lot. The teasers of today are highly “modified” and have equipped themselves with the degree i.e. “MDM”- Masters in Defense Mechanism. To escape, the accused often blames the victim and claims a relation. Often the influential leaders help the accused to save themselves because it would definitely give them more power in return! Now the question arises how long would it continue? Is there any remedy? Who are responsible for it ? I think the whole society and its system are responsible for it. Parents today become very much sentimental if someone tries to rectify their children. The teachers too do not want to take the responsibility of making the young students idealistic. In fact our society wants the brilliant students, not the morally strong students.It is noticeable that in olden days, the teasers were mostly teenagers but today even the mature aged people too “enjoy” teasing. It is nothing but outcome of abnormality. As teasing often leads to death, so there is no difference between teasing and murder. So a teaser must be shown zero-tolerance. Initially, a teaser must be counselled and warned. If still the teaser does not rectify himself, then the responsibility must be given to the law enforcers. The girls too must be aggressive in their attitude towards teasers. They must not remain too soft minded. If necessary special classes must be conducted for them so that they can deal with the situation boldly. If the victims disappear from the earth, it is very difficult to punish the accused.
Pradip Das, Lecturer, BHPI, CRP, Savar, Dhaka