Heartbreaking reunion

Last time Munni's parents saw her, she was only nine-years old.

After five long years they finally got to see their daughter, who was 14 by now, as a corpse in the Dhaka Medical College morgue.

Munni, a domestic help, was found dead in her employer's house in the capital's Banasree on Sunday morning around 10:00am.

Her body bore several marks of old and fresh burn injuries.

Rofiqul Islam, officer-in-charge of Rampura Police Station, told The Daily Star that she might have been tortured to death.

The parents- Anwar Hossain, 50, a rickshaw-puller and Nazia Begum, 42, a domestic help of Subarnachar in Noakhali, sent their child to Dhaka with the help of a local to work as a domestic help in Najmun Nahar Hasna's house, hoping she would get three square-meals per-day and earn money to send back home.

Hasna was arrested after Nazia filed a murder case yesterday with Rampura police station. Police produced Hasna in court, seeking seven days remand but the court granted two, said the OC.

Munni started working for Hasna, 34, wife of Abu Yusuf, an expatriate, who lived in a rented house in Rampura with her two school-going children, one of them  almost same age as Munni.

"She was allowed to speak to us once or twice a month, whenever we called, under Hasna's strict supervisions," said Munni's mother, Nazia, adding, "that number used to stay switched off most of the times."

"During the last one year, she repeatedly told us that she did not want to work there anymore and on January 16 she desperately told her elder sister that it had become unbearable to work," Nazia said.

The family had never been to Dhaka before. Hasna never gave her address. Munni's employers hailed from Chatkhil upazila, of the same district. Anwar often begged Hasna to let them know whenever she visited her village so that the family could see their daughter.

But everything changed on Sunday.

They received a call from the OC and heard the news of their daughter's death. Shocked, they came to the capital with the help of a neighbour. They went to the Rampura police station around 1:30am and police took them to DMC morgue in the morning, Anwar said.

Morgue sources said there were burn injuries on her body apart from old injury marks.

Denying allegation, Hasna's sister-in-law Sahana, told this correspondent that Munni sustained burn injuries from the kitchen stove, over a week ago, and added, she was being treated in the house.