'Operation Hope' for maimed boy
December 6th, 2012
01:10 AM ET

From horror to hope: A boy's remarkable recovery from brutal attack

Now you can watch the whole of "Operation Hope", the documentary charting the amazing story of Okkhoy and the strangers who worked to help him change his life. See the video in three parts here

(CNN) - "You cannot die! You cannot die!" the father mumbles to the bloodied, mutilated boy who lies unconscious on his lap.

His hands press down on the boy's slashed-open stomach to keep the insides from spilling out. He sobs convulsively. "Listen to me! You cannot die!" he repeats his morbid mantra. "If for nothing else, to exact justice."

The two are on a rickshaw headed to a hospital in Dhaka. It's not the most effective way to transport a dying child through the cramped, congested streets of the Bangladeshi capital. But it's all that the impoverished father can afford. Hours earlier, four men had surrounded the 7-year-old boy, bound his hands and feet and cracked open his head with a brick. They held him down and took a switchblade to his throat. They sliced his chest and belly in an upside down cross. And in a final brutal act, they hacked him sideways, chopping off his penis and his right testicle.

Click here to find out how you can help

"It's amazing that he lived," a doctor would later say. "I'm really surprised he didn't bleed to death prior to getting to the hospital."

This is the story of a boy who not only survived, but is now the key witness in a trial that has forced Bangladesh to confront the cruel but overlooked practice of forced begging. It is also the story of strangers, half a world away, who set out to show the boy that good exists in equal measure as evil - and who set off a chain reaction of kindness to make him whole again.

FULL STORY