BANGLADESH: 5 SENTENCED TO DEATH FOR GANG-RAPE

A court in the port city of Chittagong sentenced five men to death for rape after abducting an adolescent girl in Banshkhali sub-district of the southeastern district of Bangladesh in 1997.
Judge Md Rejaul Karim of Women and Children Repression Prevention Tribunal-1 handed down the death penalty.
All the convicts - Rashid Ahmed, Md Nasir, Nurul Absar, Kabir Ahmed, and Md Kenu - are on the run.
According to the charge-sheet, the convicts abducted the girl from their neighbourhood on April 10, 1997 and took turn to rape her.
Two days later, the victim’s mother filed a case with the Banshkhali police.
Police pressed rape charges against the five on August 24, 1997 and the court started proceedings in October 1998.
Prosecutor Chandan Talukdar told newsmen they could prove the charges against the criminals beyond doubt. The verdict came after five of the seven witnesses deposed.
Meanwhile, Odhikar, a rights group, reported 805 rape cases in 2012. Of them, 437 were children below the age of 17 and 39 were killed after being raped; 84 were victims of gang-rape and 10 committed suicide as a result of trauma following the rape.
The group observed the number of rapes by men in uniform had also increased.
In the wake of a series of rapes, the high court on January 29 directed police not to wait for anybody to come and file a rape case on their own if they had information.