Dinajpur
Yasmin Tragedy Day today
Our Correspondent
People of Dinajpur and other parts of the country will observe Yasmin Tragedy Day today in memory of the teenage girl who was gang-raped by policemen and killed in 1995.
The day is also being observed as a day of Prevention for violence against women.
On August 24, 1995, fourteen-year-old Yasmin Akhtar was gang-raped by policemen, and later, brutally murdered. After the incident, hundreds of people of Dinajpur took to the streets and laid a siege to the Kotwali police station demanding punishment to the culprits. Later, police killed seven innocent people and injured over 300 during the agitation.
Yasmin, a domestic maid at a Dhaka city middleclass home, slipped out of her masters house and boarded a bus for Dinajpur to see her parents.
She got down at Doshmile bus stoppage hours before dawn on 24 August 1995.
A police patrol van driving by insisted on picking her up. Yasmin hesitated. One of the police constables shouted at the people who gathered around the tea stall there.
They assured them that they are law-enforcers and they will drop her home safely.
Hours later, a young boy discovered her dead, off the main road.
Yasmin Akhters case represents one of the most shameful events in Bangladeshs history.
The public protests ignited by Yasmins rape and murder made her a symbol of violence against women, of the violence of the powerful perpetrated on the powerless.
At the same time, public protest and womens movement in reaction to Yasmins murder also became a means of social resistance to such violence.
Yasmins murder led to widespread protests in Rangpur one police station was besieged by a crowd for two days.
In the ensuing riot, officers fired on the protesters. Seven people were killed and there were calls for the government to stand down.
Following strong judicial inquiry and police investigations, the three officers were finally arrested in 1997.
Two out of three policemen convicted in Yasmin rape and murder case were hanged in Rangpur jail after midnight, nine years later on September 1, 2004.
Bangladesh Mahila Parishad and different women organisations and non-government organisations (NGO) have drawn up various programmes.
These include mourning precession, wearing black badge, placing wreaths at the memorial of Yasmin at Doshmile, offering special prayers and discussion meeting on the day.
