SC lawyers file GDs over explicit Facebook posts

The molestation of women during the Pahela Baishakh celebrations was the moment when an everyday crime, ignored and concealed for a long time by the society, was committed in an organised way, said a Supreme Court lawyer, who along with a colleague filed two complaints after coming across shocking, threatening, and sexually explicit Facebook posts.

The two female SC lawyers lodged general diaries with Banani Police Station on Tuesday after they saw several posts like the one declaring, "I will openly rape you [girls] on the streets. I believe in direct action…  As long as you show [your skin] we will touch you."

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All the posts are linked to the Pahela Baishakh attack, and The Daily Star has had the screenshots of the posts which accompanied the GDs.

In disparaging words, one post by the username Arefin Ahmed Shehim goes on to denounce the "TSC issue", suggesting that the assault was too little.Such misogynist and hateful comments have swamped Facebook over the past week, the lawyers told The Daily Star yesterday, requesting anonymity.

Talking about her outrage, one lawyer said, "We simply wanted to encourage citizens to raise their voices in public and to law enforcement agencies instead of simply being vocal on social media so that the authorities can see for themselves how real the threat is, how dangerously ubiquitous the problem is, and take necessary steps so that these men who are openly threatening to rape and assault women and actively encouraging and inciting others to participate in these crimes can be brought to justice."

She added that many people spoke in support of such abhorrent sentiments, but the majority spoke out against these and were rightfully extremely upset. "There should be legal consequences for saying these things," she said.

The GDs state that making such remarks is tantamount to encouraging, planning, and organising sexual crimes like harassment, rape and molestation and thus warrant legal action.

A law expert and editor of Dhaka Law Report, Md Khorshed Alam Khan, said threatening women with rape and any form of sexual violence was a crime under the Women and Children Repression Prevention Act.

Asked what steps police are taking, Sheikh Shahenur Rahman, inspector (investigation) of Banani Police Station, said, "It is very difficult to identify people based on their Facebook profiles only. But the Detective Branch is working on it now."

Some 30 to 40 rowdy youths molested around 20 females for about an hour near the Suhrawardy Udyan gate on Dhaka University campus on April 14. Ten days into the incident, the law enforcers are yet to arrest anyone.

The CCTV footage that police released on April 17 clearly shows multiple incidents of sexual assault on women by the rowdy men. Still, police have been claiming the footage does not offer any evidence of sexual assault.