A 40-year-old Bangladeshi woman cut off a man's penis during an alleged attempted rape and took it to a police station as evidence, police said.

The man attacked the married mother of three while she was sleeping in her shanty in Jhalakathi district, some 200 kilometres south of Dhaka, on Saturday night.

"As he tried to rape her, the lady cut his penis off with a knife. She then wrapped up the penis in a piece of polythene and brought it to the Jhalakathi police station as evidence of the crime," police chief Abul Khaer told AFP.

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The woman has filed a case accusing the 40-year-old man - a married father of five - of attempted rape, saying that he had been harassing her for six months.

The severed penis has been kept at the police station and the rape suspect was undergoing treatment in hospital.

"We shall arrest him once his condition gets better," Khaer added.