Abed had gotten into an argument with one of the men at a tea stall.

"He said to me, 'Just you wait and see. I will take your son and make him work for me.'"

Authorities continue to look for four others who they say are part of the same gang. To ensure Okkhoy and his family stay safe, they were placed in a battalion compound.

"As long as it has its venom, a snake will always attack," Abed says. "Who knows how many other children this gang did this to? Because we're the family that unmasked them, they will always want to destroy us."

A simple e-mail

Among the networks that aired Okkhoy's story was CNN. And among those watching it was a businessman some 8,000 miles away in Columbus, Ohio, named Aram Kovach.

"Usually we see something horrible on TV and we go, 'Oh goodness, that's horrible.' But then we move on,'' Kovach says.

But this story, he says, "kept getting progressively worse and worse and worse."

"You got to the end, and I was like, 'All right, this is unbelievable. We have got to help this kid. We have got to do something.'"

By his own admission, Kovach has had a comfortable life.

His father was a nuclear physicist in Yugoslavia, so sought after that the U.S. government handed the family its immigration documents in a manila envelope while they were vacationing by the Adriatic Sea, and whisked them by plane to the States.

"I was 12 then and I wrote to my friends, 'You have to come to America,'" he remembers. "We came like royalty, like rock stars. I had no idea that's not the experience of most people."

Today, Kovach's company creates technology for clients trying to spruce up their e-commerce presence -- and he makes a decent living doing so.

He has always wanted to get involved in philanthropy but always thought he needed to be further along in his career.

"I read about the Warren Buffetts and the Bill Gates who have millions and millions of dollars, and I always felt like when I get to that point -- when I have so much money I don't know what to do with myself -- that's when I am going to act."

A few days later, Kovach fired off a simple e-mail to CNN.

"I was so moved by this story that for several days now I can't seem to get it out of my head," it said. "My wife and I would like to somehow help his family and their little boy."

Five minutes of television was about to change the lives of two families.

Unanswered questions

Urologists in Bangladesh had done their best to preserve the boy's urethra, the tube through which we urinate. They bore a tiny hole so Okkhoy could stand up and relieve himself.