Narayangarh, July 9:

A four-year-old girl Anjali Dhital was allegedly subjected to a degree of maltreatment that is hardly expected from any parent. Anjali’s father Jay Dhital and mother Sonu beat Anjali and chained her before locking her up all day for 15 days in a row in their rented room at Muktinagar in Bharatpur municipality-11.

The family rented a room in one Bharat Pokhrel’s house fifteen days ago. Anjali has bruises and wound on her body.

The scandal came to light after a neighbour got wind of it last evening. When the media and police raided the room, the girl’s hands were still tied. Her body was full of wounds and bruises.

Talking while her hands were still tied, Anjali said her angry parents tied her hands for failing to do stand-up and sit-down as told by them. She also said that she is beaten every day and tied up inside the room before her parents leave for work.

She complained that her father was more cruel than her mother. Asked about her parents’ names, Anjali named her mother but refused to name her father, adding that he was a hooligan. Nitu Acharya, who lives in another room on the same floor, said she hears the girl crying every day but came to know only yesterday that she was being abused. She did not learn about it earlier as she is away at work all day. The house-owner lives in Gorkha district.

Acharya and the girl’s mother both work in the Medical College in Bharatpur. Although both work in the same place, they do not speak to each other, Acharya said.

Sonu, a 24-year-old sanitary worker, said they beat the girl because she does not obey them.

She confessed that the girl was locked up in the room while they leave for work as there was nobody to look after her but denied that they tie her up, saying that it was only yesterday that they tied her up. In a statement to the police, she said that her husband works in a restaurant in Kathmandu. Uma Gurung of the women’s cell in the district police office said both mother and daughter have been kept in the women’s cell. Secretary of Seto Gurans Child Development Centre, Shanti Adhikari, who visited the incident site, said the atrocity was something beyond imagination.