Slight hope flickered yesterday after information emerged that two of the three children attacked in a brutal motorbike robbery on Sunday were still fighting for their lives — conflicting with an earlier police report — and that a suspect who authorities said had been arrested a day earlier was finally in custody.

But the shifting stories went unnoticed by the victims of the crime.

There is the boy, a six-year-old who was beaten to death at his home in Pursat.

Then there are his sisters, aged eight and 10, both in comas and possibly suffering broken necks from the attack.

Relatives including an older brother, Voeun Var, kept a bedside vigil yesterday at Phnom Penh’s Kantha Bopha hospital, where the sisters had been sent for advance treatment.

 Var told the Post his sisters had not woken up since he arrived in the hospital. Although doctors would not disclose the condition of the girls, Var called it “critical”.

“The doctors have tried their best, but still cannot help them recover yet, and I’m told by the doctors that my sisters were badly hit on the head and there is blood inside there,” he said.

Doctors and hospital officials declined to comment on the case.

As family members wait for the children to open their eyes, police are questioning the person they believe delivered the beatings.

Following a tip, police raided a rental house in Phnom Penh’s Por Senchey district yesterday, arresting a 28-year-old man named Bun Yet.

Born Samath, police chief of Por Senchey district, said that after the arrest police found the stolen motorbike hidden in a nearby café.

Kandal provincial police chief Eav Chamroeun, who helped co-ordinate the operation in the capital, said Yet had admitted his guilt and was being transferred to a cell in Pursat.

“The suspect has confessed that he did rob a motorbike and hit the three children,” Chamroeun said Seung Sopheak, deputy police commissioner of Pursat province, said that once the suspect had been brought back to Pursat, he planned to take swift legal action.

To contact the reporter on this story: Kim Yuthana at [email protected]