Bangladesh police investigate killing of child labourer

Police in Bangladesh are investigating the death of a 10-year-old boy at a textile mill who was killed after co-workers inserted the nozzle of a high-pressure air pump into his rectum and turned it on.

The boy, Sagor Borman, worked at a textile mill in Narayanganj, on the outskirts of Dhaka, and died on Sunday, police official Forkan Sikdar said.

“The boy died after other workers inserted a nozzle through his rectum. His father found his son lying beside a compressor machine with his abdomen swollen,” Sikdar told Reuters news agency on Monday.

Children under the age of 14 are not allowed to work under Bangladeshi law, but child labour is common in a country where almost a quarter of its 160 million people live below the poverty line of $2 a day.

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The garment industry in Bangladesh generates 80 percent of the country’s annual exports and about four million jobs. The South Asian country is a major supplier of clothes to Western markets.

Accidents and poor conditions in the textile and garment sector are a major concern for foreign buyers. The mill where the boy worked produces yarn for garment factories, police said.

In August, a 12-year-old boy working at a motorcycle workshop was killed in the same way after he had tried to quit his job. In November, a court sentenced two people to death for the killing the boy.