In a rare incident, Justice Naima Haider yesterday took 18-month-old Angshuman Dey in her lap and fed it chocolate to stop the child from crying. Angshuman is too small to understand court proceedings. But the child was in court due to a quarrel between his mother and maternal aunt. Both want custody of the child. All family members of Angshuman, including mother Jaba Rani Dey, maternal aunt Shova Rani Guho and her husband Biplab, were present before the High Court bench of Justice Naima Haider and Justice Jafar Ahmed as per its previous order.

At one stage of the court proceedings, the courtroom atmosphere became sombre when Jaba Rani Dey began crying. She took the child in her lap for a while. But Angshuman, who has been with maternal aunt Shova Rani Guho since birth, started crying as it did not know Jaba Rani.  

While Angshuman was crying, Justice Naima Haider took the child in her lap and tried to console it. Justice Naimer Haider gave the child a chocolate.

After keeping the child for some time, the judge returned the boy to his maternal aunt and passed its order on the matter.

In its order, the HC bench ruled that Angshuman of Tangail

would remain in the custody of its maternal aunt Shova Rani Guho until further orders.

The HC bench also exonerated Nure Alam Siddique, executive magistrate of the “Ka” region of Tangail, from personal appearance in connection with the issue.

It fixed May 6 for further hearing on a writ petition filed by Jaba Rani Dey, challenging the legality of executive magistrate Nure Alam’s order. On March 21, the executive magistrate had ordered that Angshuman would be in the custody of Shova Rani.

The HC bench issued a status quo on the magistrate’s order, which means that the baby would remain in the custody of Shova Rani until the further orders, Advocate Md Oziullah, lawyer for Nure Alam, told reporters.

According to the case history, Jaba Rani became ill after giving birth to Angshuman in October 2016. Shova and Biplab took the boy. They used to visit Jaba at her home at Chandshi village of the district and often took Angshuman to their home and they would return the child after some days.

Advocate SM Rezaul Karim, counsel for Jaba Rani, told reporters that a couple of months ago, Shova and Biplab refused to return the baby. Jeba applied for custody of the child to the executive magistrate on January 16 this year. On January 18, the magistrate passed an order and gave the baby's custody to its mother Jaba.

But during another hearing in the case on March 21, the same magistrate ordered Jaba to give the baby to Shova's custody. After that Jaba filed a habeas corpus writ petition before the High Court, seeking custody of her child from Shova.

The lawyer concerned said the mother of the child had to file a civil suit before the competent court for getting back her child’s custody by settling an adoption-related dispute between her and Shova, her younger sister.