Nitor doctors fear lifelong movement difficulties

Doctors in the capital's National Institute of Traumatology and Orthopaedic Rehabilitation (Nitor) fear that a female union parishad member of Chapainawabganj who was hacked and whose tendons were severed will face movement difficulties for the rest of her life.
The Daily Star in the last two days found Nurjahan Begum at Nitor groaning in pain with over 13 knife wounds and a broken bone below the right knee.
The Mobarakpur union parishad member of Shibganj upazila said she was attacked in the upazila's Dhoppukur area on January 22 around 5:00pm while returning from the residence of the local lawmaker, Golam Rabbani.
She said she had informed Golam that the union chairman, Towhidur Rahman, also the union unit BNP president, and his supporters had allegedly issued threats to kill her and torch her residence the day before.
Nurjahan, also organising secretary of the union unit Mahila Awami League, claimed that the accused had blamed her over the January 21 arrest of a union member.
Taslim Uddin, also a member of the union unit BNP, was arrested over vandalism and arson attacks on some 30 houses and shops of AL men in the union on December 12, 2013, the day war criminal Quader Mollah was hanged.
“I was returning to my village on a bus when a teenager suddenly used a sharp weapon to force the driver to stop. In no time, six or seven youths boarded the bus and slashed my left breast,” she said.
The attackers then dragged her down from the bus by her hair, repeatedly hacked her and cut the tendons on her left hand and right leg. “I was crying for help but no passenger came to my assistance…they fled,” Nurjahan said.
After lying on the road for around 10 minutes, she was able to attract the attention of a local who took her to Shibganj Upazila Health Complex on a rickshaw.
She was shifted first to Rajshahi Medical College Hospital and then to the capital's National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases before being moved to Nitor on Thursday night where she underwent a three-hour operation requiring four bags of blood.
Till date, local police detained five men over the attack. They believe that the attack was over her personal enmity with the union chairman.
Towhidur is on the run for being wanted by police in this connection and so could not be contacted for comment.