She must have been a beautiful young girl around her teenage years.

But, now she is barely recognisable under the swellings and marks that scarred her face – lying senseless and all alone at the veranda of Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH).

Nobody had come to claim her, nor did authorities find anyone else to associate her to. The only thing police has is the name she wrote down to book a hotel last morning.

Mithila, she wrote, 18 years of age.

The dress she was wearing seemed to be of elegant taste. It gave an impression that she was from a relatively well-off family.

Lying unconscious at the floor outside the neurosurgery department, a few drops of tears would drip down her closed eyes from time to time.

Passers-by stopped to see the lifeless girl crying. They would all shake their heads to shed a shadow of sympathy – “what has come to be of such a beautiful girl.”

Police found her at a residential hotel on Mohammadpur’s Link Road last night. Since then, she has been tossed to Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College Hospital before finding a place in the DMCH.

She had been lying there for over 12 hours – without any diagnosis done or attended to. It is because there was no one else with her, hospital sources say.

She had checked in with a youth – enlisted as Ashraful – yesterday morning in the hotel, said Jamaluddin Mir, officer-in-charge of Mohammadpur Police Station.

They had identified themselves as husband and wife.

Hotel authorities could only say that the youth left the hotel last evening.

Police were suspecting that it was an attempted murder, but were no closer to trace to the root of the incident until last reported around 6:00pm.

Now, it is believed that she will lay there until anyone else comes along to her aid, hospital sources say.