CRP restructures Jui’s hand chopped off by husband, prepares her to sit in HSC exams in April
Yes, she is going to sit for the HSC examinations staring from April 1, but this is not the only news. Hawa Akhter Jui will be answering the tests using her right hand.
The 21-year-old did not lose faith in herself after her husband cut off the fingers of her right hand as a “punishment” as she to wanted to get higher education. She began practising writing with her left hand.
Yesterday, forty one days after the act of sheer brutality, Jui started writing again, using the right hand after doctors fixed a splint to it.
“I am so excited and happy I cannot spell it out at this moment,” she said with a shout of joy.
“After the incident, I had abandoned all hope of writing again with the right hand. And, therefore, I had been practising writing with my left hand so that I can take part in the HSC exams,” she said, adding that she can carry on other tasks as well.
Expressing her firm intention to study further, Jui asked all to pray for her so that her dream, which her husband had tried to shatter, comes true.
With this recovery, Jui will also be able to eat food with a spoon in her right hand.
On December 4 last year, her husband Rafiqul Islam, an expatriate worker in the UAE, chopped off her fingers with a machete.
After primary treatment, Jui was taken back to her father’s house in Narsingdi. Later, doctors at the Centre for Rehabilitation of the Paralysed (CRP) in Savar took her under their care on January 7 and within a week they made the girl write and do other tasks with her right hand.
A splint has been attached between the remaining part of her thumb and wrist to help her hold the pen properly while another device for using a spoon.
Asked, Jui said she felt no pain and did not face much difficulty in carrying out her tasks with her “new right hand”.
ATM Abdur Razzak, head of medical services of CRP, told The Daily Star that a 10-doctor team following the last seven days’ work had accomplished the feat.
“As she lost all of her right-hand fingers, she will also be provided with a cosmetic glove for a better look of her hand,” Razzak added.
Before damaging the hand, her husband, saying he had a surprise for her, took Jui to a room of his sister’s house in the capital’s Cantonment area. There he blindfolded the girl, gagged her and also tied her hands.
While Jui was waiting for a “surprise” and extended her right hand to get it, the man did something else, which was indeed the shock of a lifetime.
She was left to bleed for nearly three hours and Rafiq dumped the severed part into a dustbin.
“My only fault was that I wanted to study despite my husband’s objections,” Jui said, recalling the incident.
Her separated fingers could not be fixed to the limb as their cells had become inactive by the time they were collected from the dustbin and brought to the doctors.
After the incident, the cantonment police arrested Rafiq and he is now in jail.
-With The Daily Star input
