Staff Correspondent
Five-year-old boy Shuvo, who suffered fatal burns at the hands of his stepmother, died of his wounds yesterday morning after fighting for his life for almost a month.
The woman Shuvo’s father married to take care of the motherless boy, killed the child instead.
The chilling incident occurred at city’s Kachukhet Puranbazar area. On January 18th, a neighbour heard the little boy’s screams and rushed out to find him on fire from head to toe.
According to Majeda Begum, the neighbour, Shuvo’s stepmother Ferdousi Begum was standing nearby and watching but not doing anything to put the fire out. She said that the boy had caught fire while playing with fire.
He was rushed to Dhaka Shishu Hospital with sixty per cent burns on his little body and has been struggling with life and death since. Everyone, including his father thought that the entire incident had been an accident.
But four days later, when Shuvo was able to speak, he said that his stepmother had called him out of the house on that evening, poured kerosene over his head and set him on fire. She then threw away the can of kerosene. That’s all he could recall.
Police arrested Ferdousi Begum the same day.
Shuvo’s father Monir Hossain, a metal workshop worker, told The Daily Star that Ferdousi wanted to have a child but he wanted to wait for a while as they already had a child and he was not sure she would take good care of Shuvo if she had a child of her own just now.
Monir said he was aware that Ferdousi had been ill-treating the child — including beating him for no reason — so much so that he had sent the child to his own sister’s house for 17 days very recently just to spare him the beatings.
“She was jealous of Shuvo, for that she has killed my son,” wailed Monir yesterday.
Shuvo’s mother Tara Begum died three year’s ago. Monir got married to Ferdousi five months later.
He was inconsolable yesterday as he cried saying repeatedly, “I got married only to give my child a mother’s love, but I brought home a killer.”
Monir has filed a murder case with Kafrul police station accusing Ferdousi of killing his son.
The Officer-in-Charge (OC) of Kafrul police station Salahuddin Arshed told The Daily Star that Ferdousi had denied the charges brought against her and had been sent to jail.
Courtesy: thedailystar.net
