7 get life term for raping Bangladesh migrant

By Hameed Ashraf | NT

Bengaluru: The 54th CCH court in Bengaluru convicted seven people to life imprisonment in connection with the gang rape of a human trafficking survivor from Bangladesh.

During May 2021, Ramamurthy Nagar police detained twelve people, including eleven Bangladeshi nationals, for their alleged involvement in flesh trade after a video of a girl being sexually assaulted and tortured, had featured on the dark web. The video initially went viral in Bangladesh, Assam, and later it surfaced in Bengaluru.

The police, using informant network and technical evidence zeroed in on the gang operating in Kanaka Nagar in the city, arrested them and rescued the victim. After this, the Police filed a suo motu case of rape and sexual assault in the matter.

The video available with News Trail shows the survivor holding the legs of one of the men, crying profusely. Another woman appears in the video and shoves a cloth into the mouth of the survivor while the other men film the torture.

Preliminary investigation by the police had revealed that the survivor was an illegal Bangladeshi migrant staying in Bengaluru. All the accused along with the survivor were involved in the immoral trafficking of women and forcing them into the flesh trade.

The survivor reportedly started to divert girls working with the accused to other places. In a bid to seek revenge, the gang assaulted her brutally, before circulating the video on the dark web. In a statement to the city police, the survivor had confessed to having crossed the porous border from Bangladesh and entered Kolkata, where an agent received her and issued her a fake passport. From there, she flew to Dubai and was allegedly used in the flesh trade.

After a few years she came to India and went to Hyderabad, Lucknow, Goa, Kochi, Kozhikode and then Bengaluru. The gang which was running a flesh trade racket in Bengaluru city, stumbled upon her mobile phone and got to know that she had helped three girls escape from their clutches and return to Bangladesh. The gang traced her to a location in Kanakanagar, NRI layout in Ramamurthy Nagar police limits.

She told the police that she had a boyfriend called Lakshmi Lal, back in Kozhikode. She also confessed to the police that she was fully aware of the reason as to why she was being brought to India. She further stated that she was doing this for her brother and sister-in-law and all the money she had earned had been sent to Bangladesh.

With further directions from the then City Police Commissioner Kamal Pant and Additional Commissioner of Police (East), S Murugan, the police arrested nine accused including a woman, for their alleged involvement in human trafficking. An FIR was filed regarding the incident on May 27 last year.

Police had identified the accused as Subhoj Sheikh, Ridam Babu, Rakeebul Islam Sagar, Mohammed Babu, Rafsana Mandal, Taniya Le, Dalim, Azeem and Jamaal. The City Civil & Sessions Judge (CCH-54), J N Subramanya sentenced seven accused to life imprisonment and the other two for 20 years and 5 years in prison.