DHAKA: A 22-year-old unmarried Bangladeshi woman who was caned 39 times for alleging a neighbour was the father of her son is fighting for her life in hospital, police said Tuesday.The case has shocked the impoverished Muslim-majority nation, with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina ordering the woman to be shifted from her village home to the capital for proper medical treatment.Local police chief Moshiur Rahman told that the woman, from Comilla, 70 kilometres (43 miles) east of the capital Dhaka, had angered Islamic clerics, when she told friends that a neighbour had fathered her six-year-old son. They called her and the alleged father to appear before a makeshift Islamic court, but the man denied the paternity claim, Rahman said. "He held a Koran in one hand and swore to the village clerics that he was not the father of the boy. The village court found him not guilty," he said. "They also issued a fatwa that the woman should be caned 39 times for lying." The woman, seriously injured after the caning, was admitted to a local hospital but was later shifted to the country's largest hospital in Dhaka on the orders of the Prime Minister, Rahman said. Two of the clerics have been arrested for repression of women, he said, and DNA testing had been arranged to determine the father of the child.
Friday, August 14, 2009 MUMBAI: A 26-year-old woman died Thursday of H1N1 swine flu in the southern city of Bangalore, raising India's death toll from the virus to 20, authorities said.The death was the first reported in India's information technology capital, the Press Trust of India reported.Meanwhile in Pune, the worst-affected in India, two more victims of the virus died Thursday, raising the death toll in that western city near Mumbai to 12, the report said. The victims were an 11-month-old boy and a 75-year-old old woman.US media reported movie halls, schools and colleges were ordered closed Thursday for three days to a week in Mumbai, the commercial and financial capital of the country, as fear of the pandemic spread.Prajakata Lavangare, a spokeswoman for the government of Maharashtra state of which Mumbai is the capital, said similar orders were issued in Pune, which is also located in the state.The woman who died in Bangalore was identified only as Roopa, a teacher in
Comments