Father and aunt booked for attempt to kill child

Hisar, Oct 9 (UNI) The police has booked the father and aunt of the five-year-old starved child rescued by social workers here recently, on charges of ''attempt to kill'' the boy.

Bhim Singh, father and Dhapa Devi, aunt of Ashwani, who were pushing the child to a ''slow death'' over past three years by denying him food, clothes and shelter, have been booked under section 307 for the alleged attempt to kill the child, sources here said.

Ashwini, reduced to skeleton, was rescued by the women social workers of the village Bandaheri, near Hisar, yesterday and needed to be hospitalised in the civil hospital here for treatment.

Now the administration has decided to look after the child after he would be discharged from the hospital.

The apparently unwanted child after his father divorceds his mother three years ago, was picked from the cattle shed of the house where he was banished by his otherwise well-off family, in an emaciated condition.

Ashwini's plight came to light only after the women social workers on ''polio drops duty'' who were denied access to the child, got suspicious and decided to look into the matter.

The child who was denied food, milk, medicines and proper clothes and bedding, was declared as severely malnourished by the doctors, who were treating him. He would have become terminally ill, but for the alertness of the social workers and help by local authorities.

The child who was found in tatters on a jute sack in a stinking cattle shed, now lies comfortably in a hospital bed, fully clothed and with his stomach full, for the first time in three years.

UNI