"You cannot die! You cannot die!" the father mumbles to the bloodied, mutilated boy who lies unconscious on his lap.
His hands press down on the boy's slashed-open stomach to keep the insides from spilling out. He sobs convulsively.
"Listen to me! You cannot die!" he repeats his morbid mantra. "If for nothing else, to exact justice."
The two are on a rickshaw headed to a hospital in Dhaka. It's not the most effective way to transport a dying child through the cramped, congested streets of the Bangladeshi capital. But it's all that the impoverished father can afford.
Hours earlier, four men had surrounded the 7-year-old boy, bound his hands and feet and cracked open his head with a brick. They held him down and took a switchblade to his throat. They sliced his chest and belly in an upside down cross.
And in a final brutal act, they hacked him sideways, chopping off his penis and his right testicle.
"It's amazing that he lived," a doctor would later say. "I'm really surprised he didn't bleed to death prior to getting to the hospital."
This is the story of a boy who not only survived, but is now the key witness in a trial that has forced Bangladesh to confront the cruel but overlooked practice of forced begging.
Through a series of fortunate events, an American couple helped bring him and his family to the U.S. for a very special surgery led by a team of volunteer surgeons.
This act of generosity and kindness for a family from the other side of the world changed this little boy's life.
For more on this story, click here.
