Tania, a student of class three, lies on her hospital bed still reeling from the incident that violently shook her world and cut her dreams down to size.
She obediently threw the ‘little object’ like her brother told her to, and the next thing she knew she was swept off her feet by an unknown force – her right wrist nearly ripped apart.
Her parents, who were sleeping in the next room, woke up from a loud noise and discovered that a cocktail had exploded critically injuring their ten-year-old daughter.
Doctors at the burn and plastic surgery unit of Dhaka Medical College and Hospital (DMCH), where Tania is being treated, say she might permanently lose her right wrist.
Partha Sanker, a surgeon at the facility, said: “Blood circulation in three fingers of her right hand stopped due to the blast. Her wrist was badly injured and she has a hole in her palm.”
“We have bandaged the wrist following sterilisation and it will be kept under observation for 24 hours,” he told Dhaka Tribune.
But the wrist will have to be amputated, if blood flow cannot be re-established and the condition of the wrist deteriorates further.
The explosion had also caused damage to her shoulder and face. She narrowly escaped eye injuries.
The story of Tania may seem like a wartime story when children are caught unawares by bombs disguised as harmless objects and scattered around the backyards of their houses.
The accident occurred at the Kularmohon lane of the capital’s Hazaribagh area on Monday morning.
Tania’s immediate elder brother, Alamin, found the crude bomb wrapped in red duct tape near the Hazaribagh Park playground and thought he could use the tape for his tennis ball.
He was unaware of what was inside the object as he brought it home.
“I bought Alamin a tennis ball three days ago. He thought he would get it wrapped in the tape of the object he found and then play with Tania,” said Abdur Rashid, their father.
At home, Alamin untied the tape and wrapped it around his ball. Then he asked her sister to throw the ‘object’ out the window of their room. Tania obliged and threw it; but instead of going out it hit the windowpane and exploded.
“I did not realise it could be a bomb. I shouldn’t have brought it home in the first place,” Alamin said, looking at his sleeping sister with tearful eyes.
Tania is a class three student of the local Nur-e-Hawa Mohila Madrassa and was popular with her classmates for her nice handwriting. But she was thrust into a reality in which she can possibly never hope of using her hand for writing again.
“I don’t know what will happen to my daughter if she loses her hand,” said Rashid, a daytime rickshaw-puller who works a second job as a night guard of a local company.
When contacted, the officer-in-charge of Hazaribagh Police Station Md Iqbal Hossain said that they had primarily thought that the bomb exploded as it was being made in the house. “But finally, we understood that it was an accident,” he concluded.
“We are looking into the matter. A case will be filed in this connection,” he said.
