The condition of the housewife, reportedly gangraped and left on the leafy Jahangirnagar University (JU) campus on August 22 with her throat cut, is improving, but doctors fear her becoming partially paralysed.

Dr Shafique Uddin Ahmed, head of the neurosurgery department of Dhaka Medical College Hospital, yesterday told newspersons that she may survive but with lifelong paralysis.

"As she was abandoned for four days on the open, her injuries were exposed to infection. Her spinal cord was cut off, which is most likely to cause paralysis," he said.

The attackers are threatening the victim's husband with death for revealing their names.

As she learnt about her condition, she said in a contemptuous

tone: "I don't want to live any more."

Her mother on hearing the incident from her daughter described it once again to reporters, accusing two more attackers, Akash and Kabir.

"My daughter went to visit a nearby zoo with one friend. She was returning alone along JU premises when Liton, her former colleague and a youth of the neighbourhood, asked her to meet another colleague Delwar," she said.

Liton and Delwar with the two others waiting there gagged her mouth with her scarf and robbed her of gold ornaments and Tk 2,800 she received earlier in salary, she alleged.

"You won't escape the aftermath, since I know you all," the woman quoted her daughter as telling the criminals as they were leaving, which made them furious.

They chopped her in the neck and left her there, thinking she was dead. But when they came back on August 24 to check, they found her alive. She asked them for drinking water, but they poured acid on her body instead, she said.

Family members denied the rape of the housewife but said she became unconscious from stabs and cannot remember if they assaulted her afterwards.

A gardener found her three days into the incident and she asked him to save her, but he ran away, taking her to be a ghost.