Independent Appeal: Broken but unbowed: a woman's fight for justice

When Alpona quit her job as a servant in protest at being beaten, she was thrown off a roof. Andrew Buncombe tells her amazing story

The abuse started with words – name-calling, then accusations and cruel jibes about her visual impairment. From there, it progressed to beatings and attacks, regular and consistent.

But on the day Alpona told her employers that she wanted to quit her job as a domestic servant – a gruelling, unpaid position for which she only received mean scraps of food and a place to sleep – her enraged employers threw her from the roof of a four-storey building. Alpona suffered two broken legs and a damaged spine. And that was only the beginning of her problems.

The story of Alpona – whose mother and father are both long dead – may be exceptional, but only in terms of degree. In Bangladesh, where the disability rights movement is still building support, attacks on people with mental and physical disabilities is not uncommon.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that those who carry out the attacks believe their victims will neither have the resources or the wherewithal to do anything about it. Alpona's story – an inspiration to the movement – proves that even the most vulnerable of people can take a stand.

The 25-year-old's tale begins in late 2002, when she started work as a domestic servant for a family in the town of Bogra, a north-west Bangladeshi town famous as the birth-place of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the first leader of Bangladesh. The hours were long and the work for the family – three women and a son – was unrelentingly hard.

In early 2003, the head of the family, a large, physically powerful and imposing woman, learnt that Alpona had been given some money by a charity because of her disability. She asked for the money to pay off some outstanding debts, including an overdue electricity bill that had led to the power being cut off. That meant the water could no longer be pumped and Alpona was required to climb up and down the stairs with a container for the family's water – sometimes up to 20 times a day. "I thought about it and then gave her the money," says Alpona. Two months later, she asked for the money back. The woman blankly denied that Alpona had ever lent it to her. There was no receipt. "When I asked for the money they would beat me," she said.

And so it continued. Beatings, abuse and no sign of the money that she had originally placed in a bank as a safeguard for her future. One day in May, Alpona confronted the woman and said she wanted to leave. The woman flew into a fury. She and the other members of the household hit the young woman and pulled her hair.

"At that point I used some slang word. I called the woman muggi – prostitute – and she just threw me from the roof." Lying unconscious in the road, Alpona was surrounded by a crowd of people. Eventually the nephew of the woman who had thrown her took her to hospital. She would be there for eight months.

As Alpona slowly convalesced, a battle ensued over who was responsible for what had happened. Her employer – worried about the police becoming involved – said she would take care of her. She also issued a statement saying that Alpona had accidentally fallen from the roof. With the help of her sister, Ayesha Katun, Alpona made contact with a disability rights group who filed a claim for her release. And then, as if the story wasn't already unlikely enough, Alpona was kidnapped.

"The woman and her son came with an ambulance and they carried me out on a stretcher. The doctors said they couldn't do anything," she says. Eventually, Alpona was driven to a house in Dhaka belonging to a friend of her employer. With the case beginning to attract the attention of the media, the employer organised a press conference replete with another woman posing as Alpona, to suggest the young woman was not being held against her will.

A full nine months later, Alpona's sister and a Disabled Women's Group supported by Action on Disability and Development (ADD), one of the charities supported by The Independent's Christmas Appeal, managed to have the case returned to court.

Eventually, Alpona was released to live with her sister.

The woman who threw Alpona from the roof has been charged but never placed in custody. Campaigners say her family has influence with the local authorities. She has offered Alpona the equivalent of £2,000, a large sum of money by Bangladeshi standards, if she drops the case.

The young woman is frightened about her future. She is concerned that because of her visual impairment and the injuries she sustained, which have left her further physically disabled, she will be unable to find a husband. She is adamant, however, that she will not be bought off. She intends to continue to press for her former employer to be prosecuted.

"I said no [to the offer of money]," she says defiantly. "I want justice. I want her to go to jail."