By : Kalbana Perimbanayagam and Maizatul Ranai

KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA: She stood trembling outside the bathroom door.

Inside the locked bathroom, her 4-year-old brother was screaming and crying.

Seven-year-old N. Vinothini knew what was happening but was powerless to do anything.

Inside the bathroom was their "monster" - their mother's boy-friend who beat the siblings up regularly.

Less than an hour later, her brother Iswaran lay dead in a hospital.

Their mother, the one person who should have cared and protected them, just stood by and watched.

Speaking yesterday with her aunt and grandmother by her side, Vinothini recalled the horrifying 5.35am incident on Wednesday when her mother's 29-year-old boyfriend was said to have hit Iswaran with a hammer and burnt him with a lighter, all because the child had urinated on his bed.

"I was walking to the kitchen for a drink when I heard Iswaran's cries from the toilet.

"I tried opening the door but it was locked and I dared not knock as I was afraid that the both of them (her mother and boyfriend) would hit me as well."

Ten minutes later, the mother and her boyfriend, who was believed to have been drunk, woke up neighbours of their Jalan Kok Doh, Taman Sejahtera, Kepong home, saying Iswaran had fainted.

The neighbours rushed the boy to Selayang Hospital, reaching at 6am. Just 20 minutes later, he was pronounced dead.

Vinothini said she and her brother were regularly abused by their mother and the mother's boyfriend.

She said she often escaped the abuse because she would not "talk back" and would obey orders.

"Iswaran was different. He would always talk back and was strong-headed," she said at the Selayang Hospital mortuary with grandmother N. Saroja and aunt N. Saraswati.

Vinothini said on numerous occasions, the mother's boyfriend had tried to force Iswaran to smoke, mostly when he was drunk.

"They are heartless. Once, the man hung me and my brother upside down with our feet tied with a rope from a ceiling hook. We cried for him to take us down but he never bothered. All this was because we spoke to my grandmother and aunt."

Vinothini also claimed that her mother and boyfriend used to lock them up in their room without food before leaving to work in the morning.

"Normally, they only returned to the room late at night, leaving us starving," she said, adding that the siblings were forced to answer nature's call in a pail in the room.

She added that sometimes, when they wailed in hunger, Saroja or Saraswati would push biscuits under the door.

Saraswati said the abuse had been going on for the past three months, from the time the man moved in.

She and her sister had a falling out on Dec 31 when she questioned the man for hitting the children.

"He slapped and punched and even made up stories about me to my employer," she said, adding that she was then kicked out of the house.

Saraswati said she came to know about her nephew's death only when she was informed by a neighbour.

She was also finding it difficult to raise money for Iswaran's funeral as his mother had been arrested and his father was nowhere to be found.

City Criminal Investigation Department chief Senior Assistant Commissioner II Ku Chin Wah said a post-mortem had confirmed that Iswaran had been abused and the case had been reclassified as murder.

He said police would seek a remand order to detain the woman today and were still looking for the man.