Horrifying torture

Marks of burns and thrashing on his little malnourished body have shocked medical staff at the Dhaka Medical College Hospital.
Ten-year-old Masum weighs just 14 kilograms. He was subjected to severe abuse and suffered extreme malnutrition, according to the doctors' observations noted down in the patient's file.
In the face of acute poverty, his father, a farmer, sent him at this early age to the capital to work as a domestic help, said Mohammad Sadek Ali, a cousin of the boy. Another cousin Yasmin brought him along from Kishoreganj to Dhaka city around two and a half months ago and arranged a job for him at a house in Mohammadpur near Shia Mosque.
"The people at the house where I worked fed me once a day. I was given some rice in the morning and that was it,"
Masum told The Daily Star at DMCH yesterday. He paused after each word, too feeble to blurt out a sentence at a time.
Masum left home because there was not enough food, Sadek said, “but he did not get as much food at his employer's place as he used to get at home.”
Neither of them could name the employer.
The boy helped a police investigation team find out the house last night, said the officer-in-charge of Mohammadpur Police Station, Azizul Haque. The police detained an eight-month pregnant woman named Khursida Islam from there.
She admitted that Masum had worked at her house. The child was sick when he came for a job, the OC quoted Khursida as saying.  
She, however, did not say anything when asked why she had not taken him to a hospital. The police were quizzing her for further information, Azizul said.  
Masum's diminutive body is scarred all over. Deep purple welts were seen on his back that is already crisscrossed by old scars.
He said he had been hit on the head with a rod and that the scars were from the injuries when the homemaker had flogged him with a bundle of wires.
A black blister was seen on his left elbow. "She burnt me here with a hot iron spoon," Masum said.
His cousin sister rescued him on Friday as she discovered him in this appalling state.
Yasmin went to the house to collect the Tk 1,000 he was supposed to be paid every month. When she wanted to see him, the woman of the house was not allowing her in.
As she kept insisting, she was led to a bathroom where the kid was locked in, said Masum's cousin Sadek.
The child said he had to sleep inside the bathroom. “The floor used to be wet.”
He used to do the laundry, drag mattresses up to the rooftop to put them out in the sun and sweep and mop the floor.
“The woman at the house has four children of her own. How could she do this to him?” Sadek said.