Nursery fined £23,000 after 3 year old plunged 15 feet
Eshan Ahmed with mum Sabrina and (right) nursery owner Irshad Ahmed
Little Hippos Nursery and Day Care Centre at 318 Summer Lane, in Newtown, have been ordered to pay £23,000 in Birmingham Crown Court, after a three year old boy Eshan Ahmed plunged more then 15ft onto a concrete floor and was placed into an induced coma. The life threatening injuries left little Eshan with a fractured skull.
Eshan fall head first from the stairs on March 31 last year after he and other children ran after hearing a fire drill.
The Judge, Malcolm Morse, said nursery owner Irshad Ahmed lied to Eshan’s family and education watchdog Ofsted – claiming the lad had been pushed in a fire drill – because he realised how much trouble he was in.
The judge continued to say “The fact it had not happened before is, in my judgment, pure luck.”
The judge than said Ahmed created a “fiction”, claiming Eshan fell during a fire drill and was pushed by another child.
“You tried to persuade two members of staff to uphold this fiction but they have always refused to do so,” he told him.
Ahmed admitted one count of being an employer that breached its general duty to safeguard those not in its employment, contrary to the Health and Safety at Work Act.
He also admitted failing to notify the authorities within ten days of the incident after failing to contact Birmingham City Council.
The judge handed the nursery a £16,000 fine, costs of £7,500 and a £15 victim surcharge.
Barry Berlin, prosecuting, described Ahmed’s attempts to “cover up” the incident as “utterly cynical”.
. “But when the nursery told me an ambulance had been called my heart began racing and my legs were like jelly.
Eshan’s mother reacted positively to the verdict and said she welcomed the prosecution, saying the nursery and owner Irshad Ahmed “deserved everything they got”.
“I am angry and disappointed about what happened,” she said. “I can never forgive the nursery. I trusted them with my child’s life and they abused that.
However this may never be the end of this horrific story for Eshan and his family as doctors have said the fracture could have damaged his pituitary gland at the base of his brain, which controls growth hormones. So only time will tell if Eshan wile veer fully heel from this incident.
