It was six months ago in October last year when a six-year-old boy vanished from a village field in Pabna.

While his mother went from one police station to another, clutching his photo and begging for help, her son was locked away in a dark room. He received no food. no sunlight, but just beatings.

He was starved for days at a time. The six-year-old went through unbearable torture. His small fingers were broken. The abductors did everything to make the boy appear disabled. Then they paraded him across cities to beg, from one ferry terminal to another, using the boy's shattered body to win sympathy from strangers.

Six months passed.

And then, last Friday, police found the boy lying unresponsive beside a man at Rupsha ferry ghat in Khulna. The man, later identified as Rafikul Islam Biplob, 30, was begging with the boy in tow. He was arrested on the spot.

When the child was brought back home, his mother could barely recognise him.

"At first glance, I was so shocked that I asked the police, 'are you sure this is my boy?"' she said, standing at her son's bedside in Pabna General Hospital.

"He was so thin, I could count every bone. His face had changed. His body was full of wounds. He didn't say a word to me," she added.

She said her son had gone out to play on October 2 near their home in Pabna Sadar upazila. That was the last time anyone saw him.

"Biplob lured the boy with biscuits," said Md Abdus Salam, officer-in-charge of Pabna Sadar Police Station. "He kept him in confinement and tortured him, starving him for days. Once the boy was too weak to resist, he began taking him from place to place to beg."

The abductors had once called the mother, he said. And from that point, they began tracing him using mobile phone surveillance. They finally tracked him to Khulna's Rupsha area with help from local police, he added.

"When we found him, he wasn't even able to sit properly," said OC Salam. "His fingers were twisted, his back marked with injuries."

The boy has since undergone surgery to repair broken bones in his hand.

"He is severely malnourished. There are signs of prolonged physical abuse," said Dr Rafikul Hasan, assistant director of Pabna General Hospital. "But the psychological trauma will take much longer to heal. He's afraid of people. He doesn't speak," he added.

Biplob, who hails from Shanikdiar village in the same upazila as the victim, has been sent to jail through court proceedings.

Meanwhile, the child's mother waits at the hospital.

"I don't care if he never runs again. I just want him to smile. That's all I want," she said.