In two months since her arrival in the capital, she has been accused of theft, tortured into 'confession' and then on July 14, put behind bars under a theft case. Nobody told her family about the ordeals she has been going through. Her uncle learned about it by chance after he returned to Dhaka from his village home on July 20.

Aklima cannot afford a lawyer and no one knows when she is going to be freed. However, as per the law, she is not supposed to be in the jail even if she is proved guilty. She should rather have been sent to a juvenile correction centre as the law provides that a convicted person of below 16 years of age must not be kept in jail.

Syed Abdullah Nasir of West Dhanmondi, Modhubazar, a businessman by profession, hired Aklima as a domestic help two months ago. Aklima's uncle Ramjan Ali, who was already known to Nasir, had arranged the job for his niece.

According to a first information report (FIR) filed with Mohammadpur Police Station, Nasir's wife, a teacher of Viquarunnissa Girls School, on the morning of July 13 found that Tk 7300, a Nokia handset, and some documents of her school were missing from her handbag. The husband and wife did not waste a moment to point the finger at Aklima. Later they extracted from her a confession that she had stolen the items and given them to Shamim, a domestic help who used to work for a house adjacent to Nasir's.

"I did not steal anything. They just beat the confession out of me," Aklima told this correspondent during visiting hours at the Dhaka Central Jail on Friday. With eyes filled with tears, she struggled to narrate the traumas she has been through in the last few days.

"I don't know why I was accused of the theft. They (Nasir, his wife and relatives) beat me up, slapped me, kicked me, pulled my hairs, banged chairs on me, and repeatedly warned that if I don't confess they will hang me from the ceiling fan. They threatened that I will be handed over to police," said the girl clad in an old salwar kameez.

Like most other village people, Aklima does not know her exact age. She said the policemen while making the arrest thought she was a 10-year-old, but Nasim insisted that she is 15 years old. Her uncle Ramjan says she would be 12 or 13.

Aklima's cousin Abu Siddique, 10, who was working next door at that time, saw how she was being tortured. He said, "I saw them gagging her with a white scarf before they started beating her."

Siddique told The Daily Star the story of gruesome tortures on his cousin at a slum in Rayerbazar. He said his employers too joined Nasir and his wife in the cruel infliction of pain on his cousin. A few days after, Siddique left that job.

"They battered me for the whole day and then said if I still don't admit that I've stolen the money and the phone, they would hang me from the ceiling fan," Aklima said, "I got so scared that I gave in and said that I stole those things."

Asked if she had really handed over anything to Shamim, as stated in the FIR, she said, "I even do not know who Shamim is."

Nasir, the girl's former employer, told The Daily Star, "I mentioned Shamim in the FIR because he was the one she told us about. He too had been arrested by police but later came out on bail."

"I did not torture her. I only tried to scare her so that she speaks the truth," Nasir said, adding, "And justifying what I did to her, she finally admitted her crime in the evening."

When asked even if she had committed the theft and if it was it right to send her to jailand that too, without informing her parents, Nasir said, "I didn't want to hand her over to police. I just wanted to identify the clique behind this theft. I went to inform her uncle of the incident. But he went to his village at that time. I also called him on a mobile phone in his village to give him the news."

Aklima's uncle, however, said that he did not get any such call.

Ataur Rahman, sub-inspector of Mohammadpur Police Station and investigation officer, told The Daily Star, "We are investigating the case."

About accepting such a minor girl as an accused, he said, "As police, we cannot bar anyone from filing a case. Besides, the girl herself had confessed the stealing."