A court in Gazipur on Thursday sentenced a schoolteacher to rigorous life imprisonment and fined him Tk1 lakh for raping a six-year-old child student.
Judge Abu Bakar Siddique of Gazipur Metropolitan Child Violence Suppression Tribunal pronounced the verdict in the afternoon in the absence of the convict, Md Anwar Hossain Khan, 20, an assistant teacher.
The court directed that in default of paying the fine, the amount must be realised by selling the convict’s immovable property and handed over to the victim child.
According to court sources, the defence lawyer submitted a time petition before the judge on the day of the verdict.
However, the court rejected the application, pronounced the sentence, and issued a conviction warrant against the absconding accused, which has been sent to the police station concerned to arrest him.
According to the case details, the incident took place on 31 August 2019 at Adarsha Shishu Kanan School in Sharifpur (Dhanbari) area of Gacha Police Station in Gazipur Metropolitan area.
The victim, a six-year-old Nursery student, went to the school at around 8:45am. At around 9:15am, after other teachers went to their classrooms, Md Anwar Hossain Khan, an assistant teacher, took the child to the school office room and raped her.
The case complaint mentions that prior to the incident, Farida Begum, an English teacher at the school, called the child from the classroom and took her to the office room.
The child was subsequently threatened and intimidated not to disclose the matter to anyone. At around 11:00 am, the child returned home bleeding and crying, and informed her mother.
Following primary medical treatment at a local clinic, the victim’s mother lodged a written complaint with Gacha Police Station on 5 September 2019 after consulting family members and school authorities.
Based on the complaint, Gacha police registered a case under the Nari O Shishu Nirjon Daman Ain naming Anwar as the primary accused and Farida as an abettor.
Following judicial proceedings involving witness testimonies and arguments, the tribunal convicted Anwar. Special Public Prosecutor Selina Begum conducted the prosecution on behalf of the state, assisted by lawyers Mohiuddin and Zakir Kader.
