Police yesterday arrested a youth in connection with the death of infant Arafat who died after his mother fell off a moving rickshaw with him in her lap in the city's Doyaganj area on December 18.

The police said the arrestee, Rajib, 20, a drug addict, pulled the bag from Arafat's mother Aklima's hand forcing her to fall off the rickshaw.

A team of law enforcers arrested the lone accused raiding a slum in Doyaganj around 1:30am, Farid Uddin, deputy commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police's Wari Division, told The Daily Star.

Rajib later confessed before a magistrate to snatching the bag to manage money for drug without any intention to kill the baby, the DC said.

Farid also said the accused admitted that he took Tk 1,600 from the bag and dumped it in a dustbin.

He added as part of their investigation they collected CCTV footages and spotted a young man walking near the mugging spot at 6:18am that day.

Abdul Mannan, a rickshaw garage owner of the area, also identified Rajib as running in the area that morning after police had arrested him.

Farid said Rajib had come back to the slum just after a couple of hours of the mugging and acted as if he knew nothing about the incident.

Rajib bought drug by the money he found in the bag, said the DC, adding, it took time for the team to trace him as he is not professional and a floating drug trader.

Aklima, mother of the baby, said she and her husband Shah Alam Gazi, with their two sons -- Arafat and four-year-old Al Amin -- were going to her sister's Sanirakhra house by a rickshaw from Sadarghat at dawn that day.

Shah Alam filed a murder case accusing an unidentified person with Jatrabari police. He expressed his satisfaction over the arrest yesterday and demanded capital punishment of the mugger.