Brutal cases of sexual violence and a justice system in collapse

The mutilated body of Ramisa Akter, an 8-year-old child raped, murdered and beheaded, was recently found in the capital of Bangladesh whose Constitution promises right to life, equality, and protection to every citizen. The accused confessed within a day and eventually named another man. In any case, many remain in disbelief that justice will be delivered- an indictment in itself of Bangladesh’s rape adjudication system. When citizens lose faith that victims of child rape and murder will see justice reliably delivered through fair trials, convictions, and meaningful punishment, the crisis is no longer merely criminal but constitutional.

Bangladesh Mahila Parishad documented 786 rape and gang rape victims in 2025, while Ain o Salish Kendra recorded 749 rape cases nationwide in the same year. On 28 April 2026, Bangladesh’s Home Minister informed Parliament that 666 rape cases had already been filed nationwide since the current government assumed office on 17 February 2026. These are not isolated crimes within an otherwise functioning legal system, they are the epidemiological symptoms of a state whose rape adjudication structure has lost both deterrent credibility and constitutional seriousness. It is a collapse of adjudicatory capacity so full of failure that it jeopardises faith in the rule of law itself. The real number of child rape incidents in Bangladesh is almost certainly far higher than the official figures because survivors are socially punished before perpetrators are legally prosecuted. Cases vanish before they become cases.

What justice for victims of sexual violence require now are not temporary protests or performative outrage, symbolic mourning, or another legislation announcing deadlines that the state lacks the institutional seriousness to honour. Instead, it begs structural reconstruction.

Bangladesh currently operates a child rape adjudication system with a conviction rate of 0.52 percent. For every two hundred children sexually assaulted in Bangladesh, only one case ends in conviction. The Women and Children Repression Prevention Act 2000 was enacted in a very urgent manner, with the zeal and aim of protecting women and children. In 2025, amendments were made to change investigation time limits from 30 days to 15 and trial time limits from 180 days to 90, as well as to widen the definitions of sexual violence, and made rape a non-bailable offence. The country still operates under the colonial-era Evidence Act 1872 that categorically treated women’s sexual history as evidence until 2022 amendment, under which questions on “general immoral character or previous sexual behaviour of the victim” can still be asked with permission of the court and “for ends of justice”. Unlike the United Kingdom’s Section 41 rape shield protections or India’s post-Nirbhaya reforms under Section 53A of the Indian Evidence Act, Bangladesh still lacks a comprehensive rape shield law.

Essentially therefore, it is the colonial rape jurisprudence surviving inside a postcolonial constitutional republic and the underlying reason behind the issue remains intact: that the survivor’s morality is more legally suspicious than the perpetrator’s brutality. The crisis of faith in Bangladesh’s legal system that generates demands for alternative justice, including Sharia-- is a crisis that the state created through decades of structural neglect.

Indeed, the rising demand for “Sharia punishment” after Ramisa Akter’s murder should be understood not as a coherent jurisprudential movement but as a symptom of institutional collapse. Citizens have lost faith in constitutional adjudication and become swayed by political actors who can promise theological certainty in lieu of legal credibility. Crucially, the recent invocation of “Sharia justice” within the Bangladesh’s rape discourse is highly curated, disingenuous, and potentially lethal for women.

Classical hadd jurisprudence imposed evidentiary standards so restrictive that most rape prosecutions would become nearly impossible by making contemporary demands for “Sharia punishment” less a call for fiqh than of symbolic severity. Bangladesh has already seen what informalised “religious justice” through salish produces: coerced settlements, forced marriages, and the transfer of rape adjudication from constitutional courts to patriarchal community control.

What justice for Ramisa Akter requires now are not temporary protests or performative outrage, symbolic mourning, or another legislation announcing deadlines the state lacks the institutional seriousness to honour. Instead, it begs structural reconstruction. First, Bangladesh must immediately expand the tribunal capacity from 101 judges to at least 350 specialised Women and Children Repression Prevention Tribunals with compulsory backlog-clearance obligations, and functional and emergency forensic support units attached to each bench. Second, there must be critical oversight and follow-up of investigation, trial, and sentencing in child rape cases within stipulated timeframe, thus balancing between justice and due process. Third, a comprehensive rape shield legislation must be enacted categorically negating admissibility of character evidence of the alleged victims pertaining to, among others, the complainants’ sexual history. Third, Bangladesh must establish nationwide survivor and witness protection mechanisms, along with district-level One-Stop Crisis Centres that can offer medical, psychosocial, forensic and legal support irrespective of the geography. In case of aggravated sexual crimes against minors, countries like South Korea and Indonesia have enacted or authorised forms of chemical castration for certain convicted offenders, although the constitutionality of such punishments is itself a matter of considerable debate. Demands for severe punishment or public execution are also being made in Bangladesh. However, the country must confront an uncomfortable sociolegal reality: child sexual violence cannot be only prevented through harsher punishments. Much research in forensic psychology and child-protection studies show that abuse continues where states refuse to invest in comprehensive sex education, school-based child protection mechanisms, early psychiatric intervention for individuals presenting risk factors, and mandatory reporting and followup mechanisms.

Bangladesh must now face the uncomfortable truth Ramisa Akter’s murder lays bare: this was not an unexpected epidemic failure but the inevitable consequence of a country for decades starving the justice system, demonising survivors and legislating outrage over institutional capacity. The backlog, the collapse of forensic infrastructure, the lack of protection for survivors, the existence of colonial evidentiary laws that mistrust women more than the rapists- everything has contributed to compounding the crisis and the solution to all these indeed lies in sincere institutional investment.

The writer is independent researcher and Apprentice Lawyer.