Khan decided the first thing the case needed was attention, and she contacted a local television station.

"No child should go through this," she says.

The response from an outraged nation was immediate.

The high court asked authorities to launch an inquiry.

And within days, the Rapid Action Battalion rounded up five suspects and charged them with attempted murder.

"The boy started arguing with us and I hit him on his head with a brick," said one of the men in a televised confession.

In a chilling monotone, he recounted the assault, naming each of the attackers.

"After I hit him on the head, he fell to the ground. Then (one of the men) said to cut off his penis, and I cut it off. After that, (someone else) cut his chest and belly. Then (a third person) held his head and slit his throat."

Why did they target Okkhoy?

It was payback, his father says.

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."