A five-month-old baby fell off his mother’s lap and died when snatchers tried to grab a purse off a moving rickshaw in Dhaka’s Doyaganj area early this morning.

The mother, Akhlima, told journalists that she was heading to her sister’s house on a rickshaw around 6:00am when two-to-three snatchers grabbed her purse and tugged.

Akhlima, mother of the baby. Photo: Shaheen Mollah/ STAR

The baby, Arafat, fell off her lap in the “sudden tug” and dropped to the ground. 

Critically injured, the baby was rushed to Dhaka Medical College Hospital where doctors declared him dead, Bachchu Mia, in-charge of the hospital’s police outpost, told The Daily Star.

According to details provided by police, the father of the child is Shah Alam, from Shariatpur.