The openMovements series invites leading social scientists to share their research results and perspectives on contemporary social struggles.
Tonu was an ordinary 19 year old girl, who got unlucky. According to the initial posts on Facebook, her body was found near Comilla cantonment, outside Comilla city in eastern Bangladesh, on 20 March and there was evidence she had been raped before she was murdered. When she did not return home after tutoring a student, her father started looking for her. Little did he know that he would have to find his daughter lying lifeless near a culvert. Her head had been crushed, her hair pulled out and she had sustained injuries all over her body.
The news of the murder took social media by storm. The day after she was found, the hashtag#JusticeforTonu began to circulate in protest. Newspapers also began to publish numerous articles on rape and how such crimes are on the rise due to lack of timely punishment. Looking at the rape statistics, there has been a marked increase in recent years. According to police headquarters data, in 2014, some 4,642 rape cases were filed, up from 4,538 in 2013. The One Stop Crisis Centre of Dhaka Medical College reports that four to five women are reported to be raped every day, while the Women and Child Repression division of the police has recorded 21,220 cases of abuse in 2015. According to Ain o Shalish Kendro, a prominent national legal aid and human rights organisation, in January-February 2016, there were 105 rape incidents reported. In three cases the victim had died and two had committed suicide after the rape. These are only a glimpse of rapes and abuses as many go unreported given the social stigma around such incidents.
