Teacher gets life for rape of college girl

Culprit college teacher Abdul Latif being taken to Chapainawabganj jail after a court verdict yesterday.Photo: STAR

A Chapainawabganj court yesterday sentenced a college teacher to life imprisonment for raping a girl of the college and recording the scene on his mobile phone.
The convict is Abdul Latif, 40, an assistant professor of Binodpur Degree College in Shibganj upazila.
Judge Kobita Khanam of the Women and Children Repression Prevention Tribunal-1 also fined the convict Tk 1 lakh, in default he is suffer another year in jail.
According to the prosecution, the victim, a second year student of the college, went to Prof Latif's house at Ghonetola village under Binodpur union to receive private tuition in 2007.
The teacher raped the girl and recorded the scene on his mobile. Later, the teacher blackmailed the girl by threatening to circulate the obscene video footage on mobile phone and raped her again.
The girl then stopped going to the teacher's house and married a schoolteacher of the same upazila.
When Latif's mobile phone went out of order in September 2010, he took it to a service centre at Binodpur Bazar. Technicians of the centre copied the obscene video and circulated it to a number of mobile phones. Seeing the video footage, the girl's husband sent her to her parents' house at Kaliganj village in the same upazila on October 1 in 2010.
As the news spread in the area the following day, the students of Binodpur Degree College and local people stage a demonstration on the college campus. The college authorities suspended the teacher.
The girl filed a rape case with Shibganj police station against Abdul Latif under Women and Children Repression Prevention Act on October 2, 2010. After investigation, police pressed charges against Latif on December 7 the same year.
Latif went into hiding and surrendered to the court on January 30, 2011. After examining 13 witnesses and relevant documents, the judge pronounced the verdict in a packed courtroom.