Home-alone child played with wires

A SIX-YEAR-OLD boy who was abandoned for several hours by his mother, tried to get the household TV set working by fiddling with wiring after the electricity supply failed, a court was told.

The home-alone youngster was later seen playing in the street in the dark and the rain, wearing only slippers, jeans and a cardigan after locking himself out of his Oldham home.

Manchester's Minshull Street Crown Court was told that following a call from an anxious neighbour, police had to take the boy into protective custody until his mother could be traced.

Samera Malik (30) claimed she had left the boy safely at their Oldham home with one of her friends but when officers contacted the woman, she knew nothing about it, and told them they had not seen each other in days.

Malik was found guilty of child neglect following a trial at Oldham Magistrates' Court when the bench utterly rejected her version of events.

Sentencing her to six months in custody, Judge John Potter told her the magistrates who had committed her to Crown Court, had found that the youngster had been subjected to danger, both in tinkering with electrical wiring, and then playing in a busy street in the dark and rain, while inappropriately dressed.

He said however, that he felt able to suspend the term for 12 months, given it had been an isolated incident, and there was no suggestion of continued ill treatment of the boy.

He told her: "It seems to me that to deprive you of your liberty, despite this offence crossing the custody threshold, would be harmful to your children in this case."

The court had been told that the incident happened on April 19 last year after Malik, who now lives in Rochdale, had left him alone in the house.

She returned home at around 10.30pm as police officers were trying to contact her.

The boy told police he had been watching TV when the electricity went off. He said he had tried to get it working by "putting a wire in" ­- something he said he had done before.

Roger Brown, defending, told the court Mrs Malik had been on her way home as police were trying to track her down.