Bangladesh Disaster: Female Survivor Found 17 Days Later

17 days after the Bangladesh tragedy that saw the death toll rise over 1,000 people, police and military officials said they have rescued a woman from the rubble of the garment factory building.

Reshma Begum, a seamstress who was working on the third floor of the factory,cried out for help as the rescuers continued to search the rubble for survivors days after the collapse.

Army engineers pulled her from the basement of the building after a workman helping to clear the wreckage reported hearing her faint cries for help from beneath the ruins.

"I heard the sound and rushed towards the spot. I knelt down and heard a faint voice. Sir, please help, she cried," Abdur Razzaq, an army sergeant told Guardian.

He said that Begum has been hitting the concrete with the pipe to alert approaching rescue workers and he heard the sound after the bulldozers lifted loose rubble that had been covering the spot.

He added that she had stayed alive on biscuits in the rucksacks of dead colleagues and drinking rainwater.

There were loud cheers from hundreds of onlookers as she was removed and taken to a military hospital.

"It is incredible that someone could have survived in the wreckage 408 hours after the building came down. Her will to live is amazing. We've given her oxygen and she has been rushed to hospital," Lieutenant Shah Jamal told reorters.

So far, more than 2,500 people have been rescued in the aftermath of the collapse, with about a thousand of them suffering very serious injuries as some of the survivors had to be rescued by severing their limbs trapped under the rubble.

About nine people have been arrested in connection with the tragedy, while Primark and Canadian-owned Loblaw have said that they will compensate victims of the disaster,  the worst disaster that has ever plagued the country.

Only in November, 114 people were killed in  a garment factory fire, while there have been 8 deaths earlier this week from a similar garment factory fire.

Pakistani Prisoner Dies in Hospital after Attack in Jail

After he was attacked by another inmate in Kot Bhalwal jail in Jammu last week, Pakistani Prisoner Sanaullah Haq died in the hospital overnight, officials said.

Sanuallah died on Wednesday night from renal failure in a hospital in Chandigarh city of India, from serious head injuries he received in an attack by another inmate. According to a senior doctor, his condition was extremely critical.

Omar Abdullah, the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir states, wrote on twitter, “Although it’s a scant consolation, I’d like to offer a sincere apology to the family of Sanaullah Haq and my sympathies for their loss.”

The attack, which happened when a row brewed between Sanaullah and a murder convict, occurred on May 3, the day an Indian prisoner was cremated in India after dying from a similar attack in a Pakistani jail.

It will be recalled that Sarabjit Singh, who was convicted for spying in 1991, was attacked with bricks by inmates in Kot Lakhpat  jail in Lahore only a week earlier. The attack on Sanuallah is seen as a form of revenge for the death of Sarabjit in Pakistan.

India Supreme Court said they have been more concerned why such incidents are happening in jails, as the lives of inmates are constantly put in danger. They added that it is a serious matter and can’t be accepted.

Only last week, Pakistan called on India to punish the attacker, saying that the assault was “condemnable”. During the weekend, protests were carried out in Kashmir over the attack on Sanuallah.

New Delhi has announced that the attack is being investigated, and the “guilty will be punished”

Indian ‘Spy’ Dies in Pakistan Prison after Attack

Sarabjit Singh, an Indian national who was sentenced to death in 1991 on charges of espionage, died from his injuries early on Thursday after he was attacked last week by fellow inmates, according his lawyer and doctor.

Singh sustained several injuries when six prisoners attacked him with bricks in Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat jail on Friday. He was in a comatose state for 5 days till his death on Thursday morning in Lahore’s Jinnah hospital.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on his official Twitter page, “The criminals responsible for the barbaric and murderous attack on Sarabjit Singh must be brought to justice.”

He added that the capital would make arrangements to bring his body home for funeral rites, after a failed attempt to negotiate for the treatment of the convicted Indian in India or a third country failed.

The Indian government had initially appealed for Singh to be released on grounds of treatment for the attack he received, as his injuries were grave and of great concern to his government.

Singh was sentenced to death for spying, as well as his role in the 1990 bomb attacks that saw the deaths of 14 people.

While his family had always insisted of his innocence, their mercy petitions were rejected by the courts running during the regime of former President Pervez Musharraf who is currently under house arrest and charged with conspiracy to murder late former Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto.

Singh’s lawyer, Owais Sheikh, said, “His death was already feared. His condition was more than critical and he had less chances of survival.”

Sheikh had said earlier, that his client had received threats following the execution of a Kashmiri separatist, Mohammed Afzal Guru, who was hanged in February for his role in the deadly attack on the Indian parliament in 2001, and the execution of Mohammed Ajmal Qasab, the only surviving Pakistani in the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

In a statement, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said, “The authorities have obviously failed to do their elementary duty of providing him [Singh] safety and security.”

The commission has expressed their anger over the attack, describing it as a ‘dastardly act’, and has tasked the government of Pakistan to leave no stone unturned in fishing out the culprits for punishment.

 

Five-Year-Old Rape Victim Dies from Injuries in India

The five-year-old victim of rape on April 18 has died from her injuries, according to an official from the district said.

According to Ravi Manadiar, an administrator at the hospital, she suffered a brain injury when her assailants tried to smother her as she struggled in tears. She fell into a coma two days after she was rushed to the hospital until her death on Monday night.

 

She suffered cardiac arrest and died on Monday night, after being rushed to the hospital about two weeks ago from a brutal rape attack by two men.

Two men have been arrested in connection to the attack.

Her mother was in shock, and couldn't hold back tears. She told AP, "The court should give them the strictest punishment ever. These men should be burned alive so that the whole world will see how such criminals ought to be punished." 

According to the official for Seoni district where the incident occurred, she was lured by one of the men to a farm, where she was brutally raped by the other assailant, who happened to be a friend of her parents. Her poor parents, who earned a living from construction workers, were at work at the time of the attack.

Only a few weeks earlier, a young girl about the same age was kidnapped, raped and tortured by her assailants who locked her up in a room after the callous act in New Delhi. She is presently recovering in the hospital.

The attacks on women and young girls in recent times have sparked a worldwide outrage over the inability of the government to treat women fairly in the country.

The first attack which involved the fatal gang rape of a young woman in a bus forced the government to impose harsher punishments for sex offenders and crimes against the women folk, including the dwath penalty.

Fire at Bangladesh Collapse Halts Rescue Effort

There was a fire outbreak late Sunday in the wreckage of the Bangladesh 8-storey garment factory that collapsed days ago.

According to the reports by rescuers, there was smoke sipping out from a pile of shattered concrete, which forced the rescuers to temporarily stop their efforts, while hundreds of people are still trapped beneath the rubble.

Syed al-Amin Roman, a volunteer rescuer, said that the flames suddenly broke out when sparks were generated by those rescuers trying to cut through a steel rod to reach a woman.

Firefighters reported to the scene to put out the flames as the rescuers retreated from the area. Brig. Gen. Mohammed Siddiqul Alam Shikder, who is overseeing the rescue operations, said that they will be able to control it, hopefully.

The incident occurred only a few hours after Mohammed Sohel Rana, owner of the illegally-constructed building, was arrested in Benapole in western Bangladesh as he was about to flee into Bengal state, west India.

He has being brought back to Bangladesh to face a court trial for negligence.

Six-Year-Old Girl Raped In Public Toilet and Left for Dead in Delhi

Barely two weeks after a five-year-old girl was assaulted, raped and locked up in a room in Delhi, another six-year old girl has been found in a public toilet raped and left with a slit throat in Badarpur, southeast of Delhi on Saturday.

According to family members, the girl usually takes her bath at the public toilet, until they were informed that she was left for dead with injuries on her neck.

When she was found, she was lying on the ground; her body was covered in injuries, her throat slit and she was naked.

She has been rushed to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences trauma centre, where a surgery was carried out on her. She is in stable condition, according to the police.

According to a police officer’s account of the incident, their control room received a distress call in the afternoon by a man who reportedly found the girl almost naked and crying.

When they got to the scene, the girl was holding her hand to her neck crying. She was bleeding, with a slashed neck and private parts, which suggests that the offender(s) attempted to kill her.

Commissioner of police Ajay Chaudhary said, “”we have rounded 22 suspects. They are alcoholics and drug addicts, who have some past criminal records. All of them are being questioned. Soon, we will identify the culprit and he will be arrested.”

Only last December, there was a brutal gang rape of a young woman in New Delhi, which brought about a mass criticism of the government’s attitude to the protection of women an d children.

 
The incident forced the government to introduce new laws to go harder on sex offenders  and hold the police responsible for future occurrences.