Woman allegedly boils 2-Year-old Step-daughter's hands.

This is a case of man's inhumanity to man. Though the woman in question claims she didn't commit
such hideous act, her neighbours can swear with anything to counter that. They believe she actually
boiled her step-daughter's hands. 

See full story below:

Residents of Langbasa, a community in Ajah area of Lagos, are accusing a woman in the neighbourhood of causing a grievous harm on her two-year-old stepdaughter. Kehinde, as she’s known, is in trouble for allegedly dipping the two hands of her little stepdaughter, Esther, into oven-hot water.

The girl’s hands were boiled terribly, and many are raising concern that one of them might have 

become utterly useless. Esther, it was gathered, lost her own mum about a year ago a few days 

after her first birthday.The poor little girl has since been living with her father, known among residents

of the area as Baba Eleja. Baba Eleja, Esther’s dad, later brought in Kehinde, a mother of three, 

as his wife. He put Esther in the care of his new wife, Kehinde.

Read more after the cut............

Trouble started for the woman on Wednesday, October 31. She wasn’t feeling good and invited a 
nurse to prescribe drugs for her. It was the nurse that noticed Esther’s boiled hands. The nurse 
also realised that the little girl was very unhealthy. She sought to know what was responsible 
for the little girl’s condition and Kehinde allegedly explained that the girl mistakenly put her hands 
inside a bucket of hot water in the room. Obviously not satisfied with that explanation, the nurse 
went to inform Kehinde’s neighbours about the strange development.

Many of the neighbours, who had all along suspected that all was not well with little Esther as 
Kehinde was always beating her, rushed to the room to see the girl. One of the neighbours, who 
described himself as her father’s kinsman, spoke to the reporter. His words: “When we saw Esther, 
lying on the floor with her boiled hands, we were moved to tears. We feared that the poor girl might 
die any moment from then.

We quickly made efforts to rush her to the hospital for treatment. I don’t think Esther was the one 

that dipped her own hands in the hot water. In fact, if you see that damage done on those hands,

 you would know that somebody must have dipped those hands in some boiling water. The hands 

were boiled to the wrist. Even that poor girl wouldn’t be able to use one of the hands again.

” Another resident of the area, a woman, said Kehinde never spared the cane on the little girl.

“She is always beating the girl with canes. You can even see scars of the wounds that her canes 

inflicted on the girl’s body. Since we noticed what happened to Esther, we have moved her away 

from the woman. Earlier today, when the girl saw her stepmother, she was so terrified that she 

cried and ran away. That shows she (Kehinde) has been wicked to her. I advise the relatives of 

the girl’s mother to take her away from her father so that something more terrible than this doesn’t 

happen to her,” she told the reporter.

When Daily Sun sought to speak with Kehinde in her husband’s one room apartment in Olugbe 
compound in the community, her husband as well as some of her relatives wanted to prevent 
the encounter, saying they didn’t want the family’s dirty linen washed in public. Explanations 
by the reporter that since the matter had gone to the police, it had already gone beyond 
their private domain, did little to persuade the angry relatives. In fact, at a point, Baba Eleja 
got angry and rushed to the nearby Langbasa police post where he reported the “intruding” 
journalist.

Meanwhile, other relatives as well as the landlord of the apartment granted audience to the reporter

and urged Kehinde to grant an interview. In the course of the interview, Baba Eleja suddenly 
materialised with a policeman in tow, apparently to get the ‘busybody’ arrested. But as soon as 
the police officer discovered the reporter’s identity, he asked the journalist to continue his job. He 
advised the enraged husband to cooperate with him. Amidst verbal invectives being hurled at her by 

neighbours and some relatives, who believed she did dip Esther’s hands into a pot of steaming 

water, Kehinde told the reporter her story: “It happened a few weeks ago.

That morning, I noticed that Esther was looking very dull. So, I asked her to come to me and I gave 
her a potty for her to urinate into. I discovered that the urine was black, which showed that she was 
sick. So, I didn’t allow her to go to school. That day, I was also bleeding because I just had a 
miscarriage. After a while, I kept a bowl of very hot water that I wanted to use on myself beside 
our bed and rushed out to the kitchen. Suddenly, I heard Esther’s piercing cry and I rushed back 
into the room only to see her struggling with the bowl of hot water.

By the time I could rescue her, she already boiled her two hands. I thought she wanted to drink 

water because she was eating the rice that I cooked for her and my own children before I left the 

room. I quickly went to borrow N100 from a neighbour with which I bought some balm that I 
applied on the hands. I also gave her some drugs for her fever and she soon slept off. “When her 
father returned from work in the night and noticed what happened to her, he beat the hell out of me,
in spite of my condition. It took the intervention of our landlord before he left me.

Since then, Esther has been staying with me at home. She has not been going to school and I’ve

been doing my best to treat her. “But a few days ago, I invited a nurse, who is also a neighbour 

to attend to me. As a result of the miscarriage, I have been feeling very weak and I have lost a lot 

of blood. The nurse came and I was lying on the bed. Esther was resting on a mattress close to the 

bed.

The nurse came to attend to me but when she saw Esther, she looked worried and asked what 

happened to her. When I explained, she asked why we didn’t take her to hospital yet and I said

I didn’t have the money and that I was expecting that Esther’s father would do that. “The nurse

promptly attended to me and hurriedly left after examining Esther’s boiled hands for two or three

times. It wasn’t long after she left that a crowd of neighbours broke into our room to see Esther.

They soon pounced on me and started beating me. It took the intervention of policemen, who 
were invited by some of them, to rescue me from the mob. I would have been lynched. They 
thought that I deliberately dipped her hands into boiling water. I didn’t do that at all. I have always
been taking care of Esther as if I were her mother. Even people call me Mama Esther because of 
the way I treat her. I couldn’t have done such a terrible thing to her.”

Culled from Sunnews Online.