Jhenaidah woman claims she gets divorced over birth of twin girls

JHENAIDAH, June 20 (UNB): Four-month-old twin sisters - Mehrin and Naurin - sleep peacefully in their grandmother's arms, unaware of the hardship that has overshadowed their short lives.

Their mother, Rina Khatun of Maheshpur upazila in Jhenaidah, claims that her husband divorced her after she gave birth to the twin girls.

However, twins' father Rakibul Islam rejected Rina's allegations, describing them as "false and baseless" and instead claiming that Rina is involved in a "marriage trade" for money and that she had married four times earlier.

"Is giving birth to girls a crime?" asked Rina, struggling to hold back tears while speaking about the ordeal she says began during her pregnancy. She said she married Rakibul Islam of Purana Kola village about one and a half years ago. The couple's married life progressed normally until a medical examination revealed that she was carrying twin daughters.

Rina alleged that after learning the babies were girls, the attitude of her husband and in-laws changed significantly.

"The mental torture began when they learned both children would be girls," she said, while narrating the whole episode at Maheshpur Police Station on Friday. "They said they would have accepted the children if at least one of them was a boy. I could not understand such hatred towards my own daughters."

Rina also alleged that demands for dowry were made during her pregnancy and that she faced both mental and physical abuse from her in-laws.