Demand for highest penalty still ringing

Police yesterday barred protesters heading to besiege the home ministry at Bangladesh Secretariat, demanding the maximum punishment for those who gang-raped a Garo woman in the capital on May 21.

A procession of the agitators was stopped near Curzon Hall of Dhaka University around 11:50am. Faced with barbwire barricades, the protestors scuffled with the cops and subsequently staged a sit-in there till 12:30pm. They started off from Aparajeyo Bangla.

On May 27, Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) arrested two people -- Ashraf Khan alias Tushar and Jahidul Islam Lavlu -- and said the duo gang-raped the 21-year-old woman in a moving microbus. The two were drivers of a buying house and lured her with a job.

The elite force rejected the victim's claim in the case that there were five rapists.

Bangladesh Garo Chhatra Sangathan, Bangladesh Hajong Chhatra Sangathan, Chanchia (a platform of Garo people), and Bangladesh Chhatra Federation jointly organised the demonstration, also demanding immediate arrest of the "three other rapists".

Earlier, arrestee Ashraf confessed before a court that he and Lavlu took turns committing the crime in the moving vehicle and said there was no other person.