The family has been left devastated after the murder of a father following a case filed over the rape of his teenage daughter in Barguna. On one hand, the girl’s trauma, and on the other, the financial uncertainty after losing the family’s sole breadwinner have engulfed them in despair.
An elderly woman from the family mourned her son’s death and her granddaughter’s condition, saying, “How will we survive? They killed my son. They ruined my granddaughter’s life. Now who will look after us?”
According to the family, the 14-year-old girl, a seventh grader, had gone out for private tuition on the afternoon of March 4 from their home in Barguna Sadar. On her way back, a local troublemaker named Sijit Roy, along with a few others, gagged her and abducted her. The girl was raped and abandoned in the park near the District Commissioner’s office the following morning, March 5.
That night, the girl’s father (aged 37) filed a rape case at Barguna Sadar Police Station against Sijit Roy and another individual. The next day, locals caught the two suspects and handed them over to the police. The police arrested Sijit and released his friend on a bond.
Following this, the accused party began threatening the girl’s family to withdraw the case and remain silent about the incident. On March 11, the girl’s father went to work and went missing. Later that night, around 12:15 AM, his body was found in a bush near their home, located by the sound of his phone’s ringtone. The victim’s mother later filed a murder case at Barguna Sadar Police Station, naming five to six unidentified individuals as suspects. The police arrested four individuals, including the father of the prime suspect in the rape case, though one of them was later released.
