Rumana at a Dhaka hospital

Dhaka, June 15: A Dhaka University teacher, back home for the summer break from a Canadian university, has had her eyes damaged, nose partly chewed and face bitten allegedly by her husband who did not want her to do her PhD abroad.

Rumana Manzoor, an assistant professor of international relations at Dhaka University, left for Chennai’s Sankara Nethralaya last night after doctors said her left eye was permanently damaged and Bangladesh hospitals did not have the expertise or infrastructure to treat her.

Speaking from her hospital bed before leaving for India, Rumana, who is in her mid-thirties, said her husband attacked her from behind on June 5 while she was working on her computer. Her thesis is due for submission this October.

“My daughter was busy drawing. He first pulled my hair and then wanted to gouge out my eyes with his fingers,” she alleged.

“He bit my face and chewed off part of my nose. The way he held my hand, I could not tackle him. He beat me up so severely that I started to bleed.”

Rumana, who has been married 10 years, then passed out after slipping on her own blood. She claimed her husband, Hasan Sayed, had been torturing her for a while but she had always kept mum because of her little daughter.

Rumana’s family members and colleagues claimed Sayed, a graduate of the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, had always been jealous of his “more successful” wife and had been against her doing her doctorate from the University of British Columbia. He is jobless at the moment.

Sayed, on the run since the attack on Rumana, was arrested today from a relative’s house in the city. Rumana’s father Manjur Hossain, a retired army officer, has filed a case against him despite his threat that he would disfigure his wife’s face with acid if any legal action is taken.

The arrest has come a day after Dhaka University teachers, students and staff brought out a rally on campus to demand justice for Rumana — said to be a very popular teacher — and Sayed’s arrest within 24 hours.