Cox’s Bazar gang rape prime accused Ashiqul Islam introduced with the victim couple of days before the incident was reported.
Ashiq and his allies later demanded taka 50 thousand extortion. As the victim and her husband did not pay the money, the incident of rape occurred on 22 December.
Ashiqul Islam admitted this information during police interrogation after he was arrested Sunday.
Legal and Media wing director Comannder Khandaker Al Moin of Rapid Aciton Battalion (RAB) disclosed the matter to media during a press briefing on Monday.
“Ashiq said, he was introduced with the woman two days earlier. He and his friends demanded taka 50 thousand. The woman was picked up and raped centering the demand of extortion,” Al Moin said.
The woman claimed she had gone to Cox’s Bazar with her husband and their eight-month-old baby on Tuesday. At Laboni Beach, the husband and a stranger got into an altercation after bumping into one another in the afternoon.
In the evening, some men picked up the husband and the child in an auto-rickshaw, while three others took the woman to a secluded place and raped her.
Later, they took her to Zia Guest Inn and raped her once again after taking yaba pills.
The RAB rescued the rape survivor at around 2am on Thursday and sent her to the Cox’s Bazar Sadar Hospital one-stop crisis centre for treatment.
On Thursday night, her husband filed a case over the incident that left the nation and the tourism industry in a state of shock.
People involved in various businesses in the city are concerned by such incidents and are afraid that the local tourism industry will suffer if the hotels and motels in the district are not monitored strictly.
