Following the rape and murder of eight-year-old Ramisa Akter in Dhaka’s Pallabi area, Prime Minister Tarique Rahman visited the home of the victim, offering condolences and pledging swift justice. And as promised, the verdict on this case is set to be delivered by a special tribunal today, 19 days after the brutal incident, which is quite rare in Bangladesh’s criminal justice system. It shows that the system can act with urgency when there is sufficient public attention and political will. Last year, eight-year-old Asiya’s brutal rape and murder in Magura, which also sparked outrage across the country, saw the verdict delivered within 73 days after case filing.
However, there are hundreds of other child victims of reported and unreported cases of rape and murder, for whom justice remains elusive. Web-based platform Shishurai Shob documented 124 murders of children in Bangladesh in 2025, and found that only 35 resulted in formal charges, and just two ended in convictions. Often, the ritual that follows a heinous crime against a child is a flash of outrage, a street march or two, a televised promise of “zero tolerance,” and then silence, a troubling sequence that fails to prevent the next attack in a system that often seems to only respond to pressure.
We must stop pretending this is normal. And we must stop telling ourselves that it will pass. The numbers no longer permit denial. According to the Bangladesh Mahila Parishad’s 2025 annual report, 786 women and girls were raped or gang-raped last year—a 52.3 percent jump from 2024. Of those, 543 were children. The Human Rights Support Society (HRSS) found that of 6,305 rape victims recorded between 2020 and 2024, over 55 percent were under the age of 18. The HRSS’s latest report shows rape cases rose by 22 percent between April and May this year. Besides, nearly 70 percent of rape victims/survivors were minors in May, up from 44 percent in April. This is a generational catastrophe in which our children are the principal targets.
The killing of Asiya in Magura in March 2025 should have been the moment the state woke up. The main accused’s sentencing within months gave us the illusion of a working system. But rapes did not stop. Early 2026 has already seen child rape figures rise sharply over the same period in 2024.
Why? Because we have built a country in which committing this crime is, statistically, almost free. A joint study by the Supreme Court of Bangladesh and BRAC, analysing 4,040 cases disposed of in the first half of 2025 across 32 districts, found that the conviction rate in cases of violence against women and children was just three percent. Seventy percent of the accused walked free. Fifteen districts recorded zero convictions. The average case took 1,370 days—nearly four years—to be resolved, although the Women and Children Repression Prevention Act, 2000 mandated disposal within 180 days. Over 35,000 cases have been pending in the system for more than five years. For the victims and their families languishing in uncertainty, this feels more like a waiting room with no exit than a justice system.
Passing tougher laws has not closed this gap, because the gap is not on paper. The Women and Children Repression Prevention (Amendment) Bill, 2026, passed in parliament in April, reduced the statutory time limit for disposal of rape cases—that is, after charges are framed—from 180 to 90 days. The ambition is welcome but meaningless without the infrastructure to deliver it. Survivors need unglamorous things that deliver results on the ground rather than feel-good provisions that rarely work.
First, the number of Nari O Shishu Nirjatan Daman tribunals must be roughly tripled in high-caseload districts, with dedicated forensic units attached. It is impossible to manage the existing caseloads with the number of judges currently assigned to these courts. Without judges, prosecutors, and trained investigators in adequate numbers, every reform will die at the court’s door.
Second, it is crucial to further professionalise the investigation process. Too many cases collapse because forensic reports arrive late, evidence is mishandled, or police officers—mostly men—interview traumatised children in conditions that guarantee withdrawal. Every district needs a women-led specialised investigation cell, with mandatory rape-evidence protocols and statutory timelines for forensic reporting. Degrading and traumatising procedures like the two-finger test, banned by the High Court in 2018, must remain banned in practice rather than on paper.
Third, protect witnesses. Bangladesh has no operational witness protection law. Victims and their families face threats, shalish settlements imposed by local elites, and coercion from politically connected accused. A statutory framework including relocation, identity shielding in court, and criminal penalties for intimidation is overdue.
Fourth, end the culture of out-of-court “compromise.” Many rape cases never reach a courtroom because village arbitration councils pressure families of victims to settle. This must be expressly criminalised in cases of sexual offences, with prosecutors empowered to pursue cases regardless of family withdrawal.
Fifth, address the demand side. Raising awareness of mandatory consent and respectful relationships from the secondary school upwards is not optional in a country where nearly 70 percent of rape victims are children. Curricula in madrasas and mainstream schools alike must teach, plainly, that the protection of a child’s body is a non-negotiable moral and civic duty.
Sixth, properly fund all of the above. This is not a “women’s issue.” It is a safety issue of national importance as well as a test of whether Bangladesh still recognises its citizens as worth protecting. A country whose eight-year-olds cannot sleep safely in a relative’s home or step outside home in the neighbourhood, unsupervised, has lost something no growth statistic can replace.
Press conferences that promise security and safety are not enough; the public demands a judicial system capable of convicting rapists and delivering justice swiftly, so that survivors do not have to spend years waiting for closure. This government—and all that follows—must understand that delivering swift justice is the bare minimum of societal decency, not an exceptional achievement.
Professor Dr Mohammad Nurunnabi is director of the Center for Sustainability and Climate and associate dean for Quality Assurance at Prince Sultan University, Saudi Arabia, and an academic visitor at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford. He can be reached at [email protected].
Views expressed in this article are the author's own.
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