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Rumana Manzur, 33, a Fulbright scholar from Bangladesh completing a master's degree at UBC, was savagely beaten and blinded in Bangladesh by her husband.
Photo Credit: Handout, Special to the Vancouver Sun
Rumana Manzur, the University of British Columbia student blinded in a vicious June 5 domestic assault in Bangladesh, is reportedly seeking medical treatment in developed countries after being unable to find eye specialists in Bangladesh and India that could help restore her sight.
The Daily Star, a newspaper in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, is reporting that Manzur's family has approached specialists in the U.S., Singapore, Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands to repair her damaged eyes.
"We are trying to explore if any doctor in the world can treat the eyes that do not respond to light," Manzur's cousin, Rashed Maqsood, told the Star.
Manzur, a 33-year-old UBC graduate student, Fulbright scholar, and assistant professor at Dhaka University, says she was attacked by her husband, Syeed Hasan, during a bitter argument over her education; her eyes were gouged, part of her nose was bitten off and her cheek, lips and throat were chewed on in front of the couple's five-year-old daughter, Anusheh. The assault allegedly lasted 25 minutes, and ended when maids opened the locked room to find Manzur lying in a pool of blood.
Hasan was arrested June 15, and remains in the custody of Bangladeshi authorities. He confessed to resenting Manzur's pursuit of education, but later claimed during a news conference his wife had been communicating on Facebook with an Iranian lover, and she physically attacked him after he confronted her.
Manzur has tearfully denied accusations of infidelity from her hospital bed in Dhaka.
She said her last memory from before the assault was of working on her computer with her five-year-old daughter by her side. She had planned to return to UBC in August to complete her thesis on climate change.
"I was working on my university thesis when my husband rushed into the room and locked the door. He grabbed me by the neck and pulled my hair back. The attack was preplanned, we were not having a fight," she said. "He put his fingers in my eyes."
Manzur said she had kept secret a decade of violence within her marriage. "He was always sorry after. He always promised the beatings would never happen again."
She had sought treatment in Pondicherry, India, but returned to Bangladesh when the doctors there told her they could not help her.
Friends, family, and colleagues are organizing to seek justice for her and to fund the treatment she needs.
A rally on her behalf is scheduled for Sunday at 3.p.m. PST, at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Friends have started a Facebook group called Support for Rumana Manzur.
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