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Four people including a Muslim cleric have been arrested in Bangladesh in connection with the death of 14-year-old girl who was publicly lashed.

The teenager was accused of having an affair with a married man, police say, and the punishment was given under Islamic Sharia law.

Hena Begum’s family members said a village court consisting of elders and clerics passed the sentence.

She was alleged to have had the affair with her cousin and received 80 lashes.

Punishment received

The family members of the married man also allegedly beat the girl up a day before the village court passed the sentence in the district of Shariatpur.

“Her family members said she was admitted to a hospital after the incident and she died six days later. The village elders also asked the girl’s father to pay a fine of about 50,000 Taka (£430; $700),” district superintendent of police, AKM Shahidur Rahman, told the BBC.

He said it had not been established yet whether she died because of the punishment she received or another reason.

“We are still waiting for the post-mortem report. In the meantime, we are also looking for another 14 people including a teacher from a local madrassa in connection with this case,” Mr Rahman said.

Activists say dozens of fatwas – or religious rulings – are issued under Sharia law each year by village clergy in Bangladesh.

“What sort of justice is this? My daughter has been beaten to death in the name of justice. If it had been a proper court then my daughter would not have died,” Dorbesh Khan, the father of Hena Begum, told the BBC.

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– And then later this:

A Bangladeshi girl who was publicly whipped for an alleged affair with a married man bled to death, according to a fresh post-mortem examination.

Doctors in Dhaka found multiple injuries on the body of Hena Begum, the deputy attorney general told the BBC.

The High Court ordered her body to be exhumed and taken to the capital after a local autopsy recorded no injuries.

Miss Begum died in hospital six days after last month’s beating, which has caused shock in Bangladesh and abroad.

Police have opened a murder investigation.

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Dozens of cars were parked outside. Crowds thronged the pavement, desperate to get through the metal gates.

In the courtyard women were filling plastic bottles and jerry cans with water blessed by the imam.

As I took off my shoes, I noticed a marble plaque on the wall:

“There is no illness which Allah cannot cure”.

Inside, huddles of families were camped out on sofas.

There were many tearful faces. Men paced up and down. It might have been an ordinary hospital waiting room until a girl started shrieking and contorting.

A man scooped her up and carried her off into a room off the landing.

Spine-chilling yells came from behind the frosted glass door but nobody turned a hair. Gradually they were stifled by incantations from the Koran.

Most of the patients here are young women and many have suffered breakdowns after being forced into marriage. They are brought to be exorcised and turned into Chechen-style Stepford Wives.

The Centre for Islamic Medicine is an imposing red brick mansion near the centre of Grozny.

It was once the headquarters of the Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev – Russia’s number one enemy and the man who masterminded the school hostage siege in Beslan in 2004.

Like many buildings in the Chechen capital, the centre has been expensively renovated.

Two wars for independence from Russia reduced Grozny to rubble.

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