Five women day laborers who regularly traveled across districts for agricultural work were killed in a road accident in Madaripur on Sunday evening, highlighting the extreme vulnerability faced by working-class women in Bangladesh. The women were returning home after a day of wage labor when a passenger bus collided head-on with a battery-operated auto-rickshaw on the Dhaka–Barishal highway in the Milgate area.
The deceased women—Shefali Baroi (42), Dulali Baroi (42), Ava Baroi (45), Amita Baroi (40), and Kamana Biswas (45)—were all residents of Paikerbari village in Kotalipara Upazila of Gopalganj. All five were primary income earners for their families, working as daily agricultural laborers in neighboring Madaripur. Two other people, including the auto-rickshaw driver and a bus supervisor, were also killed in the crash.
Local residents said the families of the deceased are extremely poor and dependent on the women’s earnings for survival. As of Monday morning, funerals had not yet taken place, as families lacked the resources to arrange them. Villagers were collecting donations to cover burial and cremation costs. Several of the women left behind young children, including widowed Kamana Biswas, who had four children, one of whom is in Class Two.
Highway police confirmed that the bus involved in the crash has been seized, though the driver fled the scene and remains at large. While a case is expected to be filed, the incident once again draws attention to the unsafe transport conditions, lack of labor protection, and absence of social safety nets that disproportionately endanger poor, working women who travel long distances for daily wages—often with fatal consequences.
Bangladesh Feminist Archives 