6-month jail for offenders

Parliament yesterday passed a bill making strong provisions to protect women and children from family violence and repression.
The legislation styled 'Family Violence (prevention and protection) Act 2010' authorises the court to hold trial in camera on consensus of both parties to dispose of cases filed under this law.
“A person might be punished with up to six month's jail term and a fine of maximum Tk 10,000 or both for committing offence,” says a provision of the bill.
It also says a person, filing false case with ill motives, will face up to one-year jail term and a fine of maximum Tk 50,000 or both.
According to the legislation, family violence means physical and mental torture, sexual harassment and financial loss caused by a person who has family relation with the victim -- woman or child.
Interfering in personal freedom, hampering normal movement, communication or expression of personal will or opinion would be considered as mental harassment.
State Minister for Women and Children Affairs, Shirin Sharmin Chowdhury proposed to pass the bill.
Defending the enactment of the legislation, the state minister said in most cases women are being subjected to physical and mental harassment in houses, which ultimately causes severe damages to their physical and mental health.
“Therefore it is imperative to build social awareness by enacting the law to prevent family violence,” she said.
The House also passed another bill yesterday paving way for setting up an International Mother Language Institute, which will work for developing and preserving mother languages and publicising Bengali language abroad.
Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid proposed to pass the bill.
Meanwhile, the parliamentary standing committee on the LGRD ministry yesterday recommended for passage of a bill aiming to amend the union parishad act.
The bill proposes to drop a provision from it for redrawing boundaries of the wards under a union parishad, maintaining population disparity of more or less than 10 percent from one ward to another.
The Chairman of the body, Rahmat Ali placed the committee report in parliament with recommendations after scrutinising the bill.