Former national cricketer Shahadat Hossain Razib and his wife Jasmine Jahan were arrested in 2015 on charges of torturing their minor house help named Happy.

They were tried in court but were discharged due to a lack of evidence. It was well-known that some influential quarters had influenced the police to make it happen.

Another couple—ABM Hasanuzzaman, 48, and his wife Rehena Akhter, 40—were arrested in 2017 for torturing domestic worker Buli, 17, in their flat at Priyanka Housing under Shah Ali police station of the capital.

On the basis of evidence, police filed a charge sheet in the court on July 4, 2017, accusing the duo. But later the defendant reached a compromise with the plaintiff in exchange for Tk2 lakh.

On February 1, 2018, Maria Sultana of Gandaria was arrested for torturing her teenage house help, named Laboni. Kadamtali police investigated the case but did not name anyone but the survivor as a witness.

Two much-hyped incidents of torture on minor house helps in recent times took place at a flat in Dhaka’s Mohammadpur on February 6 this year and August 6 last year.

Two girls—Preeti Urang, a 13-year-old indigenous girl from Moulvibazar, and seven-year-old Ferdousi from Brahmanbaria—jumped off the eighth-floor flat of their employer to escape recurrent incidents of sexual abuse and physical torture.

Preeti succumbed to her injuries at Suhrawardy Hospital the same day. The other girl, who hails from Nasirnagar of Sarail, survived but has been bearing the signs and trauma resulting from the brutality.

The case filed over Ferdousi’s torture and her fall from the flat due to negligence was later quashed as the police filed a final report, giving a clean chit to her employers Ashfaqul Haque, 55, and his wife, Tania Khondoker.

Ferdousi’s family told journalists that they were offered Tk2 lakh to settle the case.

The impunity awarded to Ashfaque, at the time executive editor of The Daily Star, and his wife led to a similar incident of torture of a minor house help, Preeti Urang, who jumped off the flat to escape torture on February 6 this year.

The Tejgaon zone Deputy Commissioner, HM Azimul Huq, told the media that police were under tremendous pressure from Ashfaqul’s family members and the newspaper.

This time, police detained the couple, their 18-year-old son and the only daughter, 21, who lives abroad for higher studies but was in Bangladesh on vacation at the time of Preeti’s death. The children were released soon but the couple was sent to jail via court the following day.

Mohammadpur police also took them on remand. On April 2, The Daily Star authorities terminated Ashfaque without citing any reason. The Daily Star authorities published an announcement on its website and the newspaper, stating that Ashfaqul had been terminated from the post of executive editor, which he had been holding since 2019.

“He joined the newspaper in 1993 in the sports section and worked as Sports Editor, Joint News Editor, News Editor, Chief News Editor,” the notice said.

Ashfaqul’s wife got bail on April 22 and another court approved his bail plea on June 11.

Contacted on Wednesday, Officer-in-Charge of Mohammadpur police station Ali Iftekhar Hasan said he had no information on the investigation process, saying that the Detective Branch of police were dealing with the case.

Experts say that in the absence of a law and lax monitoring, there is no trade union for domestic workers in Bangladesh.

Several NGOs have long been demanding a separate law for the protection of the domestic workers in line with the policy formulated in 2015. The policy stipulates that employers must preserve the rights of the workers in terms of recruitment, wages, working hours, age, treatment, rest, and training.

While hundreds of girls and women have died at the hands of their employers over the last decades, the country has seen a verdict in one case till date. A woman was sentenced to life in jail in 2017, for torturing Aduri, an 11-year-old house help, and throwing her into a dustbin in 2013.

Preeti’s tragic death
Thirteen-year-old Preeti Urang jumping off the flat of journalist Ashfaqul was the second such incident since August 6 last year. But both the police and the newspaper remained reluctant to ensure justice in the case of Ferdousi.

Rescued with critical injuries, Ferdousi later underwent some surgeries. Now staying at home, she said she wanted to die on that day to escape unbearable torture.

Preeti’s death has revealed a torture cell at the flat, where brutal techniques were unleashed upon children—all aged seven to 13 working as house helps—until they could escape.

Preeti and two other minors from the indigenous Urang community, whose parents work in a tea estate in Moulvibazar, and Ferdousi were subjected to brutal physical torture at the flat in the last couple of years, according to a fact-finding mission comprising university teachers and rights activists, and investigations by journalists.

The children were not allowed to talk to their families on the phone or visit their homes for months. Despite that, their parents were given a lump sum amount at the whim of the employer. Notably, all the girls discontinued studies to feed their poor families while their parents could sign their names only.

In the case of Preeti Urang, her family was given Tk15,000 in two years or Tk625 per month, while another girl got Tk2,00,000 in nine years or Tk1,852 per month.

Witnesses discovered Preeti hanging from the opening of the windowpane of the flat’s living room around 8am on February 6. Since she was about to fall on a tin roof on the ground floor inside the building’s compound, locals urged the gatekeeper to let them in and save the girl.

But the gatekeeper did not pay heed until the building manager, Md Abdul Adel, took Preeti, with her skull, ribs and legs fractured, to nearby Suhrawardy Hospital, where she was declared dead.

Her autopsy report has yet to be made public. Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College Hospital sources said Preeti’s mutilated corpse had signs of recurrent torture in different parts of the body, possible evidence of unusual sexual activity, and fresh marks of strangulation on the throat.

Hailing from Mittingga village in Kamalganj of Moulvibazar, Preeti was brought to this house in early 2022.

Eight months have passed since her demise, which the police initially mentioned as death caused by negligence, but a complete investigation into the mysterious death has yet been delayed. The Detective Branch of police took charge of the case filed by Preeti’s father Lokesh Urang, a tea garden worker, with Mohammadpur police station.

Similar incident neglected
Preeti’s fall from the flat brought to the fore the incident of Ferdousi from August 6 last year. She tried to escape torture on that day, only four days after she was brought from Brahmanbaria.

Locals said the building authorities did not cooperate when asked to save the girl when she fell on the same tin roof. She was taken to Suhrawardy Hospital, then to Dhaka Medical College Hospital by the building manager and a sophisticated surgery was performed on her.

Later, a case was filed on charges of torture and keeping the child away from her family. The mainstream media carried news till then, but the preceding incidents remained behind the curtain; neither The Daily Star nor the police made any public statement.

Five days after her admission to DMCH, the girl was taken to a private hospital and then sent to her village home. The medical report says the girl was bleeding when she was brought to the hospital, and her labia minora to anus was found to be ripped and torn. The building manager. who signed the consent paper as a guardian, said she “fell from height”, according to media reports.

Accordingly, Sub-Inspector Rajib Hossain of Mohammadpur police station filed the final report in court, seeking a clean chit to the “reputed members of society”, while concluding by saying that the allegations were factually incorrect and that such allegations had never been raised against the accused in the past. He mentioned that the child’s injuries were normal and avoided mentioning the employment of an underage girl in domestic work.

Contacted, the SI said he had written the report based on instructions from the higher police authorities.

At the time deputy commissioner of police’s Tejgaon zone, HM Azimul Huq, said they were under tremendous pressure from Ashfaqul’s family members and the newspaper. They kept the victim isolated during treatment and took her away from the DMCH. Therefore, the police could not conduct necessary tests for suspected rape.

The girl told the fact-finding team that she had been tortured in her vagina each of the four days during her stay in the flat; she said someone hugged her and took off her pants.

“She was shocked while narrating the incidents. She was crying. She said she got pain between her legs not after the jump but before. Not for one day, she had been tortured for four days. On the last day, she jumped from the eighth-floor windowpane to die in excruciating pain,” said Farha Tanzim Titil, an associate professor of Islamic University and member of the delegation. She demanded a medical examination free from outside influences.

Survivor’s statement
Teacher Farha Tanzim, writer and researcher Priscilla Raj, local journalists and social workers met Ferdousi’s parents in Nasirnagar this year. There they found the mother and at one point the girl returned home after playing with her peers nearby.

“She sat on our lap when we were talking to her mother and neighbours. I asked her, ‘What to do there, mother?’ In response to our question, she said that she was allowed to pick rice. While we were talking playfully as we were going about the events of the day, the child shut up at the mention of it. A fearful look in her eyes and a desperate reluctance to speak. After a long time, the child said she was in pain before falling,” said Farha Tanzim.

Although she was playing with other kids, she still had a long way to go to fully recover.

“Nor is it certain that she will ever fully recover. The back of her head is raised with swelling that will take time to heal. The mother said she cannot support her family with the meagre amount she earns. The girl has several stitches in her genital area. She screams in pain when urinating.”

Perhaps she should not have any sense of life and death at this age. But the experience of the four days at the flat of journalist Ashfaqul forced her to believe that death was better than living a painful life, she said.

DS Editor’s letter
The Daily Star editor and president of the Editors’ Council, Mahfuz Anam, in an open letter on February 16 termed the death “tragic, unfortunate and sad demise”.

Claiming no interference in the probe, he steadfastly supported the call by all concerned for justice in Preeti’s case and committed “full support in the efforts by the investigating authorities to unearth the truth and take appropriate actions”.

He wrote: “We reiterate this paper’s unwavering commitment to upholding the rights of children and report relentlessly against all forms of child abuse. We have been in the forefront of upholding the rights of the poor, disadvantaged and the marginalised which we will continue unabated. Upholding the rights of all minorities, especially those of ethnic and religious minorities, remains at the core of our policy.

“The Daily Star is a value-based and ethically driven newspaper fully committed to the freedom of the media, freedom of speech and expression and other rights and freedoms enshrined in our constitution.”

Forty-five days later, the newspaper authorities terminated Ashfaqul without citing any reason.

It could not be known what steps The Daily Star authorities took after the first incident on August 6 last year and whether they carried out any investigation after Preeti’s death on February 6. Editor Mahfuz Anam did not respond to the questions sent via email.