The boy to be in grandma's custody

A Dhaka court allowed grandmother to take custody of a minor boy yesterday, a day after he was granted bail in a bomb blast case.

Police arrested him in October 2013 in the capital's airport area on charges of blasting three crude bombs during a hartal called by the BNP and its allies. Since then the boy, now 16 as per the case documents, had been in jail for two years. 

Judge Jesmine Ara Begum of the Juvenile Court, Dhaka gave the custody to his grandmother Kohinur Bagum as she prayed for it.

AM Jamiul Haque Faisal, a lawyer of Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust (BLAST), who moved the bail petition, traced the woman and brought her to the court.

Faisal said he was relieved after he had found the grandmother of the boy, who was at the Juvenile Development Centre in Tongi. 

On receiving the court's order, the centre will hand him over to Kohinur. 

Faisal quoted the boy as saying to him that he was arrested when he was going to visit his grandmother's home in the airport area. He also claimed to be of 11 years old now.