A young man burned alive in Bangladesh for denouncing an Islamic cleric

Groups of protesters called for justice yesterday in the Bangladeshi capital for an 18-year-old girl who died after being burned alive for refusing to drop charges of badual harbadment against the religious director of her Islamic school.

The victim, Nusrat Jahan Rafi, told his family that on April 6, he was trapped in the roof of his school in Feni City, where five people in a burqa had asked him to drop the charges. When she refused, they tied her hands and sprayed her with kerosene and burned her, she said.

Rafi told the story to his brother while an ambulance took him to the hospital and he recorded his testimony on his cell phone. She died four days later in a hospital in Dhaka, burned 80%.

The atrocious murder shook Bangladesh, provoking demonstrations and revealing the condition of women and girls in this conservative Muslim country of 160 million inhabitants.

In Bangladesh, badual harbadment and violence are often not reported because victims are intimidated and the legal process, which is carried out by Islamic clerics, usually takes a long time. In addition, many people avoid reporting such cases to the police because of social stigma. The same pattern is repeated in most Islamic countries, such as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and many others.

"We want justice, our girls must grow up in safety and dignity," is Alisha Pradhan's complaint, model and actress, at the protest. "We protest against all forms of violence against women and the authorities must ensure that justice is done."

Tens of thousands of people attended Rafi's funeral prayers in Feni. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina promised Rafi's family during their meeting in Dhaka that those responsible would be punished. According to Banaj Kumar Majumder, head of the police investigation bureau, at least 17 people, including students, were arrested. At the end of March, Rafi filed a complaint with the police, claiming that the director of the madrasa, In the Islamist school, he had summoned her to his office, where he treated her several times.