Abstract

Violence against women appears in a multitude of forms in Bangladesh. Women’s social, cultural and economic rights continue to be neglected through wide ranging forms of violence, such as wife abuse, rape, dowry killings, acid throwing, sexual abuse and sexual slavery through international trafficking in women.2
Zaman defines violence ‘as an act of aggression occurring in both personal and social contexts, and, therefore, includes women’s experience of both domestic violence and violence outside the home. It is a common scenario in Bangladesh that women are at risk and insecure both in domestic and public spheres. In the dominant presence of violent physical attacks like rape, dowry related murders, acid attacks etc, mental torture as one of the main forms of violence in Bangladesh is seldom either overlooked or less-addressed. However, it is now recognised that psychological torture or mental torture are occurring in the family and in the community as one of the major forms of torture to women in Bangladesh. This article attempts an in-depth look into the nature, extent and cause of mental torture of wife as well as other women and girls in the society and how it has been dealt in the Bangladeshi legal system.