This year Bangladesh celebrated 40 years of independence. In 1971 West Pakistan, as it was called then, fought a bloody 9-month long war for separation from East Pakistan. Independence came at a high cost.

Many Bangladeshi women were raped during the war by Pakistani soldiers. But Bangladesh’s conservative society left no space for these women to talk about their terrifying experiences. Though they were awarded for their strength with a plague, they are treated as a pariah by society. To be able to lead a normal the women were forced to keep their stories to themselves.

On this week’s South Asia Wired, reporter Bijoyeta Das visits two sisters in Dhaka. Laily Begum and Saleha are both Birangonas, as the women who were raped by the soldiers are commonly called. The sisters are not afraid to break the wall of silence that, even today, holds so many other women in Bangladesh captured.
 

Listen to this week's show here: