Violence against women has been on the rise in Bangladesh, a conservative Muslim nation. 35-year-old Bablu Mondal was arrested by Bangladesh police for forcibly shaving his wife’s head after finding a hair in his breakfast.
Despite laws protecting women from abuse and sexual assault, women in Bangladesh are still suffering in the hands of their male counterparts, who take advantage of religion to repress them.
“He found a human hair on the rice and milk breakfast his wife prepared for him. He became angry seeing the hair and blamed the wife. He then took a blade and forcibly shaved the head of the wife,” the police reported.
The Bangladeshi was charged with “voluntarily causing grievous hurt”, an offense that carries a maximum sentence of 14 years in jail, and also for “outraging the modesty” of his 23-year-old wife.
In a horrendous incident reported in April, massive protests broke out after a 19-year-old schoolgirl was burned to death on the orders of her headteacher after she reported him for sexually harassing her.
According to a local rights group in Bangladesh, there was an average of three rapes a day in the first six months of the year. The Activist group further reported that 630 women were raped between January and June, 37 were killed after the assault while seven others took their own life. There were also 105 instances of attempted rape.
In as much as the Constitution of Bangladesh states that women have equal footing with men in all spheres of public life, it also recognizes religious personal laws, which are unequal and unfair to women.
