Taushnuva Fardousi, a Bangladeshi woman currently residing in the UK as a student, has been issued death threats by a local goon in Rampura, who also threatened to splash acid on her. Notorious local goon Rashed Ali has been harassing her family, who live in Rampura at the moment, for quite some time now. According to our correspondent, Taushnuva was often followed, bullied and harassed by Hossain and his gang on the streets.
When Taushnuva’s parents sent her abroad to the UK in order to gain higher education, Ali grew even more fierce and aggressive. He demanded that Taushnuva’s hand in marriage and constantly hounded and pressured her parents to comply. When eventually a general diary was filed with the Rampura police, Ali and his gang got hold of Tasuhnuva’s younger brother and gave him a severe beating. When the incident resulted in Tasuhnuva’s family filing a case, the police station authorities demonstrated a strong reluctance to press charges, due to the fact that Rashed Ali has strong ties with the current Awami League government.
Ali’s temper reached a boiling point after this as he consequently started issuing Taushnuva’s family with daily death threats, on almost a daily basis. Meanwhile when we managed to establish contact with Taushnuva in the UK, she provided us with an audio recording she had preserved. In said audio recording, we found Rashed Ali threatening to splash Tashnuva with acid, and serving her with death threats. Her family, being under pressure by socio-religious factors as well as to secure the life of both family themselves and their daughter, arranged to marry her off. Taushnuva opposed with her life the marriage being forced on her and fled back to UK. All of these incidents happened when she went back to Bangladesh for the first time to see her parents. Both Taushnuva and her parents got utterly disguised and shocked by the way things happened back home at her first visit, as a result Tashnuva and her family both abandoned each other and Tashnuva kept no contact with her family at Bangladesh. The second time she visited her parents was for a 2/3 weeks as an emergency occurred on her mother’s serious health condition which needed an operation immediately.
However, nearly after 4 years of her second visit to Bangladesh, Taushnuva decided to go back to live with her parents’ house about a year and a half ago. She tries to communicate with the family starting from her brother, wrote some status on social networks online about going back home. Right after she tried to establish a communication with her family, Rashed Ali constantly rings on Taushnuva’s UK number and continued threatening her. Taushnuva also took time out to discuss her fears and trepidations with us, she said “the constant phone calls and filthy swearing of this guy has made me so angry that I throw my phone and it broke. Since then I feel a little relaxed but as I don’t have to hear the threats anymore, but it might happen again if my contact is found.”
She was in such mental shock that she became suicidal and been referred to the NHS therapist. Taushnuva attempted to call the Bangladesh High commission in the UK to complain about these threats as well as to claim justice, she was refused to be heard as dealing with criminal acts are not the kind of service they provide. When we got in touch with the officer in charge of Rampura police station, he declined to provide us with any comments. So we took it upon ourselves to probe the incident a bit further and we came across a new recruit in the police station (someone who did not wish to be named) as a result. This gentleman informed us that,
“There are several cases and complaints filed against Rashed Ali across several police stations in and around the area. But because of Ali’s deep affiliations with the Awami League, law enforcement authorities have been reluctant to take any significant actions against him. Whenever there is a complaint filed against him, his “godfathers” would immediately jump to his rescue. In the past 6 months there have been 3 high profile employees transferred from this police station alone.
When we tried to get in touch with Rampura Thana’s counsellor and the honourable Rampura MP via telephone, their phones were fund either switched off or out of reach.
