Girl raped, thereafter

The six-year-old daughter painfully narrated to her mother how she had been raped.  She is so little, her father said. “I cannot describe what she said [with the limited words she knew]. I cannot say how I felt when my daughter was recounting what happened to her.”

Since the girl was raped on February 19, the father, who works as a bus staff, has been seeking help to get justice. Some influential locals pressured him on settling the matter, and when he didn't agree, they offered him money and then threatened him.  

With the family forced into such a situation, the little girl has been suffering.

“Throughout the night [on February 23], she was screaming in pain,” the father said. The next day, he and his wife set off for Dhaka from Araihazar in Narayanganj, along with the child, taking whatever money they had.

On the day of the rape, the girl was playing with some other children near the family's rented house. Around 4:00pm, the parents noticed that their daughter wasn't there.

A vendor of a nearby stall told them a man named Delowar Hossain Delu, aged around 40, had bought the girl some candy and took her towards the bank of the Brahmaputra River. Three hours    later, the parents found the girl      walking back. Delowar was not far behind.

When the parents started asking Delowar why he had taken the girl along with him, he ran away. They then went to his house where Delowar's family hurled abuse at them and threatened them.

The next day, the father went to Araihazar Police Station and the police, along with him, went to the house of the accused but didn't find him.

Since then, Delowar has been hiding. “Police are trying to catch him,” said Rafiuddoula, who is investigating the rape case filed a day after the incident. 

When the victim and her family came to Mugda Hospital, doctors suggested taking the girl to the One-Stop Crisis Centre at Dhaka Medical College Hospital.

“I had almost no money and was telling my wife that 'Allah would surely send someone to help us,'” the victim's father said. On the way, they met some students of Dhaka University and they helped the girl get admitted to the hospital.

She was released yesterday. The Daily Star spoke to the father over phone in the evening when the family was returning home.

Bilkis Begum, coordinator of the OCC, said results of the forensic test were yet to come. “Signs of rape were found on the girl.”

Rafiuddoula visited the girl at the OCC on Monday.

The clothes the girl had been wearing at the time of the rape were collected, Bilkis said. The sample of evidence is with the OCC now. DNA test will be conducted by the CID, she added.  

The girl's father said, “I don't know how to read. Police made me sign some papers but didn't tell me what was written on them.”     

When a female police and a constable took the father and the girl to the Narayanganj Court two days after the incident, they were told not to say anything to anyone. Police had also asked for money for the travel and the medical test of the girl, the father alleged, and he had pledged to pay it off gradually.

The actions of the police, however, worried the father. He said yesterday he was in fear.