Yasin, who came to light up his mother's world briefly. His mother was assaulted when she was eight months' pregnant. Yasin was born a month later, only to live for four months. Photo: Star Who killed little Yasin? Nobody. He was killed nonetheless. Relatives speak of him a lot. His big, dark eyes looked watery all the time but he never cried. In the four months he lived, he never moved his limbs
either; he only gave blank looks. And one day he just collapsed and died. “Isn't it strange that he never cried or moved his limbs?” says his grandmother. Maybe not, given the unspeakable brutality he had undergone while in his mother's womb. He was born a month after his mother survived a most cruel torture in a Bhashantek slum in February. She was eight months into pregnancy when a local gang beat her up with cricket stumps and metal strings after undressing her. As if that was not enough, they forced her to the ground, placed a cricket stump on the baby bump and rolled it over as hard as they could. "We could feel that the baby was being squeezed inside its mother's womb. It's a wonder that the baby was born alive after such torture," said Yasin's grandmother. Extremely poor, the family could never arrange the money to take Yasin to a doctor to check what was wrong with him. But family members and locals are certain his life was cut short by the brutal torture on his mother. Advertisement It all happened for six tolas of gold that too was alleged to have been stolen by a member of the family. The gang forced nine members of the family in a room, including six women, undressed them all and assaulted them for about 15 hours since the morning of February 11. Two other male members of the family were beaten up outside the room. The Daily Star is withholding the identities of the women considering the social stigma associated with the incident. The perpetrators claimed one of the family members, who happened to be an accomplice of the gang, stole some gold ornaments but did not share it with them. Led by Mamun, Bablu, "Langra" Badal and Anwar, about 20 criminals demanded that the ornaments should be handed to them, despite the family's insistence that they knew nothing about it. At one stage, the perpetrators forced the undressed men and women -- all close relatives -- to pose for photos and videos and threatened them to circulate those if their demand was not met. Rashed, 11, shows scars from the torture. Photo: Star With time, the torture intensified and it continued till 11:00pm when the victims, all of them bleeding, were rescued by a relative of Mamun and other neighbours. By now they have all recovered from their physical injuries, but the 15 hours of horror has left the family stigmatised and shredded. Yasin has died. Sara (not her real name), 23, has been abandoned by her husband two months after the incident. Another victim, now in her middle age, has to swallow frequent insulting remarks from her husband after years of a happy marriage. Then there are neighbours. They tell these women that they should commit suicide after what has happened to them. Sara, abandoned by her husband, left the area and has become a domestic help somewhere in Gulshan. Fifteen-year-old Toma (again, not her real name) is too young to live on her own. Once an efficient garment worker earning Tk 8,000 a month for the family, she has retired from the public eye. Living with her parents in the slum, she cannot sleep without taking sleeping pills. And she has nightmares almost every night, said her mother, herself a victim. In one nightmare, she stands by a stinking ditch, from where emerges a demon, its body covered with horrible sores, haunting her. Many other demons, carrying coffins, walk past her. She starts running for life, only to find in front of her the pitch-black water of the ditch.
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