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Bangladesh Hangs Two Ex-Policemen for Rape, Murder
Thu Sep 2, 2004 06:40 AM ET
DHAKA (Reuters) - Two former policemen convicted of the rape and killing of a teenager were executed by hanging in a north Bangladesh jail early on Thursday.
Senior prison official Mohammad Azizul Haque said it was the first time that a member of Bangladesh's police force had been hanged.
"The two, Moinul Hoq and Abdus Sattar, were hanged one minute past (Wednesday) midnight," he said at the Rangpur jail, 219 miles north of Dhaka, where the sentences were carried out.
The incident in the northern town of Dinajpur in 1995 sparked protests across the country by women and human rights groups, driving the authorities to arrest the offenders and put them on trial.
Accompanied by another policeman, the men kidnapped Yasmin, an 18-year-old housemaid who worked in the capital, late one night when she asked for a lift home in their police van after missing the last bus.
They took her to a quiet spot, where they raped and strangled her, leaving her body beside a road to be found the next morning and returned to her mother, police and town officials said.
"The departed soul of my daughter will now rest in peace," said Yasmin's grieving mother Sharifa Begum, 50. "And I pray to almighty Allah to save all other girls from predators, including police," she told reporters on Thursday.
The country's leading women's rights activist Farida Akhtar said the hanging of Yasmin's killers would send a stern warning.
"We are satisfied. Though delayed, justice was not denied in Yasmin's case," she told Reuters.
