Global Courant 2023-04-11 12:18:25
Police say the woman was ‘lashed 82 times’ and ‘stoned 80 times’ with small pieces of brick after an imam issued a ‘fatwa’, a religious decree.
A Muslim scholar and three village elders have been arrested in Bangladesh on charges of caning and stoning a woman after she was accused of an extramarital affair, police said.
Police said on Monday the woman had been “lashed 82 times” and “stoned to death 80 times” with small pieces of brick after an imam issued a fatwa, a religious decree, on her last week.
Police inspector Zakir Hossain said on Tuesday that officers had arrested four people, including the imam of the mosque in Habiganj in the northeast, after the woman filed a criminal case against 17 people on April 7.
He told Al Jazeera that the cases were filed under the Prevention of Oppression of Women and Children Act in Bangladesh.
“After filing the case, we arrested the local cleric who issued the fatwa. We also arrested three other village elders who took part in the informal council known as ‘shalish’,” Hossain said.
“The village council ordered caning and stoning in the name of sharia law after she was accused of an extramarital affair,” Hossain said.
The village elders “said it will redeem her from her sin and redeem her honor,” he added.
The police officer said the 30-year-old woman was allegedly having an affair with a local autorickshaw driver. Her husband, he said, works in the Gulf country of Oman and returned home after the incident was reported.
“He is also seeking justice for what happened to his wife,” Hossain told AFP news agency.
The woman said she was “a victim of terrible injustice”.
“I can’t put into words what they did to me,” she said.
The predominantly Muslim South Asian country of 170 million has a secular legal system and the application of Islamic law in criminal matters is illegal.
The fatwa sparked widespread protest, with feminist groups and rights activists protesting to demand the prosecution of the perpetrators.
“They acted like medieval people,” Fauzia Moslem, the president of the country’s largest women’s group, told AFP.
Decades ago, village councils in rural Bangladesh often used Islamic law to punish Muslim women accused of adultery.
In a 2011 ruling, the Supreme Court of Bangladesh allowed the issuing of fatwas but banned their implementation.
The decision effectively allowed Islamic law to be followed voluntarily, but prohibited any form of punishment by Muslim scholars or village councils.
Faisal Mahmud contributed to this report from Dhaka, Bangladesh.
