Girl jumps off 4th floor, survives

A minor girl, aged around 12 years, miraculously escaped almost unscathed after she had jumped off the fourth floor of a six-storey building in the capital's Dhanmondi area on Thursday evening.

A domestic help at a flat on the fourth floor, the girl, Swapna, first fell on the plastic roofing between the building and its boundary wall on the ground floor. She then made it to the bank of Dhanmondi Lake next to the building and ran for cover, said Omar Faruk, a cook who was preparing meal at a makeshift camp for labourers working nearby.

She came running to the camp and begged for shelter as she wanted to run away from her employer who had been torturing her physically for days, Faruk said quoting her.

She said that she had been working there for one and a half years and all the members of the employer -- the husband, wife and their daughter -- used to beat her up, he added.

“A car driver of her employer arrived at the camp soon afterwards and wanted to take Swapna away, but she refused to go back,” Faruk said, adding that the police, who were patrolling nearby, also showed up and took the girl in their custody.

Sabbir Alam, a sub-inspector of Dhanmondi Police Station, said they took Swapna to a hospital in Dhanmondi where the doctor and his daughter work and the matter was “solved” through a mutual understanding.

“The two families came to a mutual understanding and they handed her [Swapna] over to a distant relative,” he said, adding that Swapna's neighbour in her village home in Bhola took her as she has no guardian.

“Swapna's father and mother left her years ago after they separated and both remarried. Then a female house help took Swapna to the doctor's house where she was working,” SI Sabbir said.

After he made a visit to the doctor's flat on the same day of the incident, they all denied torturing Swapna, claiming that the girl had “mental problem”, he said.

Asked whether any case was filed in this regard, the SI said her relative did not file any case.

When asked why the police did not file any case, he said they were still investigating into the incident and there is still time to file a case, if needed. However till the filling of this report at 6:30pm last evening, no case was filed in this connection.

During a visit to the spot yesterday, Mukhtar Hossain, a security guard of the building, told The Daily Star, “It was around 5:45pm when I heard a loud bang. I noticed that a child had fallen down from the fourth floor. Within a minute, people from around the area thronged the spot.”

All the three residents of the flat in the building are physicians by profession. The man is a professor at a hospital while his daughter is also a doctor there.                   

Visiting the hospital yesterday, an official of the administration department, told this correspondent that the girl took primary treatment there and left the hospital as her condition was well.

Advocate Salma Ali, former executive director of BNWLA's (Bangladesh National Women Lawyers' Association) told The Daily Star, “Police should take the girl to One-Stop-Crisis centre or victim support centre to learn her physical and mental condition. Police cannot hand over someone to a distant relative this way as there is already an allegation of torture.”