Who was Yasmin Akhter?
Many of you would remember Yasmin Akhter, a 14 year old girl who worked as a domestic worker in Dhaka. Yasmin, on her way back home in Dinajpur, got down at Dashmile crossing from a Panchagarh-bound bus on August 24, 1995. As she was waiting for a Dinajpur-bound bus, a police team on-patrol duty picked her up in their van on false pretext of giving her a lift to her village home. They later raped and killed her. The incident evoked widespread condemnation and during the street demonstrations in Dinajpur, seven individuals were killed by the police. The Women and Children Repression Prevention Tribunal of Rangpur awarded the death penalties to three policemen and six policemen were acquitted for a lack of evidence on August 31, 1997. Two of the policemen were executed on September 1, 2004. It was the first time that policemen in Bangladesh went to the gallows for such a serious crime. The success in this case is not provisions of law or procedural effectiveness but popular public protes
