Brother and sister get life in prison for acid attacks on cousins

A Chattogram court has sentenced a woman and her brother to life in prison for attacking two cousins with acid.

Chattogram Fifth Additional Metropolitan Sessions Judge Nargis Akhter delivered the verdict in the decade-old case on Wednesday.

Both suspects, Farzana Latif Saki, 35, and Iftekhar Latif Sadi, 34, were in court to hear the verdict. They were taken to jail after the verdict was delivered.

At the time the incident took place, the victims – Mumtaha Karina and Salnabil Tasnim – were 19 and 16, respectively.

The suspects are their cousins.

The two suspects were sentenced to life in prison under one section of the 2002 Acid Control Act, said Taslim Uddin, an additional prosecutor at the court. They also received a seven-year prison sentence under another section of the law, he said. Both sentences will be served concurrently.

Saki was also fined Tk 50,000, while Sadi was fined Tk 30,000 by the judge.

According to the case files, Saki lived in Chattogram City’s Badurtala area. On Sept 20, 2010, she went to stay at her aunt’s home in the city’s Joynagar. Her cousin Karina’s wedding was set for Oct 10. Karina’s parents went out on Oct 1 to invite their relatives from the village to the wedding.

“My daughter [Karina] is younger than Saki,” Karina’s mother said. “She was jealous that my daughter was getting married first and threw acid on her face. Her brother, Sadi, helped by bringing her the acid.”

Karina and Tasnima’s father Anwarul Kabir filed a case over the incident. The case claimed that, in the early hours of Oct 2, Saki threw acid on the faces of her sleeping cousins and then went to the bathroom and threw acid on her own face in an attempt to cover up her involvement and shift the blame onto another attacker. The three were sleeping in the same room.

Police arrested then college student Saki and her brother Sadi over the incident. They were indicted on Apr 28, 2011.

“We will appeal this verdict with a higher court,” said Shambhu Prasad Biswas, a lawyer for the defence. “It makes no sense to believe that a girl of 22 or 23 years of age would throw acid on her own face after throwing it on the faces of her cousins. None of the witnesses saw the incident. We hope to get proper justice from a higher court.”