Housewife Torture: Husband denied bail, sent to jail

A man and his parents who brutally tortured his wife for dowry were sent to a Tangail jail on surrender yesterday.

Mohammad Shofiqul Islam and his father Hamid Miah and mother Rokeya Begum surrendered to the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Court in the district and prayed for bail, Court Inspector Mohammad Anwarul Islam said.

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However, Judge Hamidul Alam rejected the bail prayer and sent them to jail, he said. They were later taken to the Tangail district jail later, he said.

Five days after Fatema Akter Liya gave birth to her second child, she went back to the hospital with swollen eyes and severe injuries inflicted on her by her husband Shofiqul for dowry.

Her head had to be shaven to stitch cuts and she could hardly talk when this correspondent met her at Tangail Medical College Hospital recently.

Liya's father Tofazzal Hossain, of Matikata village in Nikrail union, married her off to Shofiqul, imam of Nikla Raipara mosque and a shopkeeper at a nearby market, in 2010.

At the time of marriage, her father gave three tolas of gold ornaments and sometime later Tk 10,000 amid much pressure from the husband for money.

From the beginning, Liya, 25, saw suspicious behaviour of her husband Shofiqul. He often didn't come home at night and seldom gave her money for familial expenses.

Besides, there was always a demand for dowry from her husband. Whenever Liya protested, she faced torture.

“We brought our daughter (Liya) home on several occasions but Shofiqul's parents took her back through village arbitration by elders,” said Liya's mother Halima Begum.

She gave birth to her first baby a year after the marriage. The second son was born on November 30 through a caesarean section at a private clinic in Tangail town.

On the night of December 6, a day after she went home, Shofiqul switched off the light of their room and attacked her all of a sudden with a sharp object.

Her father filed a case with Bhuapur Police Station on Friday against Shofiqul, his father Hamid Miah and mother Rokeya Begum under the Women and Children Repression Prevention Act, said OC AKM Kawsar Chowdhury.

The accused had been on the run since the incident.