Born behind bars, a 7-year-old steps outside with her mother

When Kamrunnahar Moni walked through the gates of Kashimpur Women’s Central Jail on Tuesday afternoon, she was not leaving alone.

Holding her hand was her seven-year-old daughter, Mobashwera.

Moni had entered prison in 2019, seven months pregnant, after being arrested in the murder case of Nusrat Jahan Rafi, a madrasa student from Sonagazi, Feni. Mobashwera was born during her mother’s imprisonment and had lived with her inside the prison ever since.

On Tuesday, after Moni was acquitted in the case, mother and daughter walked out together. For Mobashwera, it was the end of a childhood spent almost entirely inside a prison.

Seven other people acquitted in the Nusrat murder case were also released that day from Kashimpur High Security Central Jail in Gazipur. Relatives gathered outside to receive them.

Moni emerged wearing a garland, with Mobashwera beside her. Speaking to journalists outside the prison, she described trying to provide an education for her daughter under the restrictions of incarceration.

“My child was born in prison. She spent seven years in prison,” Moni said. “I have been teaching her from second-grade textbooks there. I helped her memorise one para of the Quran and taught her how to read the Quran. I fulfilled all my responsibilities toward her.”

Some of the ordinary objects of school life had to be improvised.

“I cut up a piece of clothing and made her a schoolbag,” Moni said. “She would go to school carrying three books.”

Mobashwera had no experience of what a schoolbag outside prison looked like, her mother said. Still, Moni wanted her daughter to understand that carrying one was part of going to school.

“She doesn’t know what a schoolbag normally looks like,” Moni said. “I taught her from inside the prison that you are supposed to carry a schoolbag when you go to school.”

Life inside prison

For seven years, prison routines defined much of Mobashwera’s daily life. Her mother said the girl learned to read there, studied second-grade books and received Quran lessons. The prison and the people inside it formed much of the environment she knew.

Moni said she had kept her daughter with her because she believed separation would have been harder on the child.

“If my daughter had been kept outside, she would not have been well,” she said. “A child can never be well without its mother.”

Moni was arrested during the investigation into the 2019 killing of Nusrat Jahan Rafi, a case that drew nationwide attention. She was pregnant at the time and later gave birth while in custody.

Mobashwera remained with her as the case moved through the courts and the years passed.

By the time Moni was released, her daughter was seven.

Outside Kashimpur on Tuesday, relatives waited for those leaving prison. Mobashwera stood beside her mother before departing with her family.

For the first time, the place where she would sleep that night was somewhere beyond the prison gates.

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