Son tells of mother's cruelty
The eldest son of the woman, who abused her ten-year-old domestic help so badly that he needed to be hospitalised, said he had asked her mother many a time not to torture Masum but to no avail.
“It is true that Masum was often not given his meals and that he used to be made to sleep in the bathroom ... I often told Ammu [mother], even requested her not to treat him like that but she never listened to me,” Shubho said while narrating to The Daily Star the horrifying tales of his mother Khurshida Alam's cruelty to the house help.
The boy, who was sent to Dhaka by his father in the face of acute poverty, was forced to sleep in a dingy bathroom with barely enough space for a child to curl up beside a low commode in Shobho's house in Mohammadpur.
“Ammu made her sleep in the bathroom because he often used to wet his bed,” stated Shubho.
Even the child's bed was nothing but a flimsy mattress on the balcony floor unprotected from sun and rain.
Mother would lock Masum in the bathroom so that he could not steal food, said Shubho, a first-year student of a public university.
Masum, who was so malnourished that he weighs only 14 kilograms, was admitted to Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) yesterday in an appalling condition with numerous welts crisscrossing his diminutive body, a bad-looking laceration in the head and scabies in hands and feet.
Dr Tasneem, a medicine specialist at the DMCH, said the child suffers from scabies caused from sleeping on the bathroom floor.
“The webs of his fingers and toes have sores that itch, and only an unhygienic environment could have caused them,” she said.
The laceration on the back of his head was so infected that the doctors could not even stitch it up at the moment, she told The Daily Star.
The laceration was caused by Khurshida's first grader son, who once hit his head with an iron rod.
The son, whose name is being withheld, told this correspondent that he had hit him without any reason.
“Masum was bleeding. So, Ammu scolded me a bit,” said the boy, who is about the same age as Masum, and with his plump frame stood in stark contrast with the malnourished Masum.
When asked about the scars on Masum's body, Shubho said, “Mother flogged him with bundled-up steel wires”.
Even the second son confessed that he too used to beat Masum.
“We only would beat him up sometimes. However, I swear that we never abused him like he is saying,” said the eleventh grade student, who apparently was unaware that even laying a finger on a domestic help is deemed unacceptable.
Masum's cousin Sadek Ali, who sits by his side in the hospital, told this correspondent his parents back in Kishoreganj have not yet been informed.
“They are poor. They had no choice but to send their children for work. Why increase their suffering?” said Sadek Ali.
Khurshida Islam was arrested yesterday following a case filed with Mohammadpur Police Station by Masum's cousin, said Officer-in-Charge Azizul Huq.
“We have no doubt that she has abused the house help,” he said.
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