Rupa rape and murder: Charge sheet accepted

Staff Correspondent, Tangail: A tribunal in Tangail has accepted the charge sheet submitted against five accused in a case filed over the murder of Zakia Sultana Rupa, a law student and multinational company employee, after gang rape in a running bus in the district’s Madhupur area.

Judge Md Abdul Mannan of the Women and Children Repression Prevention Tribunal of Tangail accepted the charge sheet around 11:30am on Wednesday.

Tribunal’s special public prosecutor (PP) Nasimul Aktar said the five accused in the case were produced before the court in the morning as it earlier fixed today for submitting the charge sheet. Lawyers for the accused filed a bail petition.

But the court rejected the bail petition after hearing both sides and accepted the charge sheet.

Later, the court fixed November 13 as the next date for framing charges in the case.

Police on October 15 framed charges against five accused in the case filed over the Rupa murder.

Inspector Kaiyum Khan Siddiqui, also the investigation officer of the case, submitted the charge-sheet to the Judicial Magistrate Court in Tangail.

The charge-sheeted accused are bus driver Habibur, 45, its supervisor Safar Ali, 45, and helpers Shamim, 26, Akram, 35 and Jahangir, 19.

Rupa, 27, was murdered after gang rape in the running bus while returning to Mymensingh from Bogra on August 25.

Police recovered the bloodstained body from Panchmail area of Madhupur upazila on that night.

Following post-mortem, she was buried at the town central graveyard as unclaimed body. Later, victim's relatives identified her seeing her photograph.

On August 28, police arrested the five accused from Mymensingh over the murder of Rupa.

Police on August 31 exhumed the body of Rupa and handed it over to her family for burial in a proper manner.

Rupa, who completed her Masters from Bogra Azizul Haque College, was studying law at Dhaka Ideal Law College. She was working at Unilever Bangladesh Limited at its Sherpur branch.

risingbd/Tangail/Oct 25, 2017/Shahriar Sifat/Amirul