Bangladeshi Man Chops Off Wife's Fingers For Pursuing A College Education

An educated Muslim woman is often a threat to an ignorant, uneducated religious male in certain Muslim-majority countries. They prefer their women folk to remain at home, barefoot and pregnant. An education is a threat to their dominance, that's why they burn down schools in Pakistan and throw acid in young girl's faces in Afghanistan, hoping to keep them so fearful they abandon their educational goals. 

In fact, maiming females is an all too common practice as a retaliatory act for anything from being spurned, to being shamed, to jealousy. Acid is most common, but women have also had body parts cut off as punishment.  Remember the young Afghan woman, Bibi Aisha, who made it to the front page of Time Magazine after her nose and ears were cut off? She had been left to die after shaming her in-laws by running away from her abusive Taliban husband, but miraculously survived.

In the recent case of a 21-year-old Bangladeshi woman, Hawa Akhter Sui, jealousy played a factor in her mutilation. Her husband,  Rafiqul Islam, is the perfect example of the ignorant Muslim chauvinist male. Rafiq works in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), as a migrant worker. Married in 2008- while Rafiq worked in Dubai, Sui stayed with her parents in Bangladesh and, in spite of his objections, continued her studies.  He had threatened her with "severe consequences", but little did she know how severe.

Sui, a second-year college student, said that Rafiq had called her and said that he had some presents for her, and that she should fetch them from his sister and brother-in-law's house. She arrived on December 1 at her sister-in-law's house, Naima Begum, and waited.  3 days later, Islam showed up at the house and told her he had a surprise.  This is what happened:

It was around 8:00am.



Jui's husband Rafiq took her into a room and locked her in.


“He told me that he would like to give me a surprise, and covered my eyes with my scarf. I could sense that he was angry with me, but I dared not protest,” Jui said.


“Then, he asked me why I continued my studies despite his objections.”


“I told him that I would sit for the HSC examination, and then quit studies. But he taped my mouth shut, and asked me to put my right hand on a table.”


“Suddenly, Rafiq said he would put an end to my studies, and then hacked off my hand.”

As Jui started groaning in pain, Rafiq's sister and brother-in-law broke into the room.

Then Sui sat there bleeding for 3 hours:

"Instead of taking me to a hospital, my husband Rafiqul Islam and his sister Naima Begum remained busy mopping up the blood on the floor and the bed. Later, Rafiq went out of the house to dump the detached hand into a dustbin"


“On my repeated requests, they took me to the hospital by an auto-rickshaw at about 11:00am, nearly three hours after the incident. On the way to hospital, they threatened to throw me out of the vehicle, if I told the story to anyone."

Had they taken her to the hospital sooner, there might have been a chance to re-attach the fingers. After initially lying to medical personnel at the 2nd hopsital Sui was taken to, Rafiq finally admitted he had thrown the fingers in a dustbin, but by the time they found 4 of them, it was too late. One still remains missing.

Some of the actual details are a tad sketchy-  how much did the sister and brother-in-law know? How much of the hand was chopped off?  But what we do know is that this controlling animal subjected his wife to agonizing pain and disfigurement for life, because he was jealous of her educating herself.

Sui will continue her studies, once she heals and learns to use her left hand. She wants to become a lawyer.  Rafiq, on the other hand is bucking for life in prison, if Human rights organizations get their wish.

Sources: The DailyStar, The Daily Mail UK, The Daily Star