Dhaka, December 8

Bangladesh Test cricketer Shahadat Hossain was granted bail on Tuesday after being detained over allegations of beating a child maid, a prosecution lawyer said.

The country’s court bailed Shahadat until March 31 but deputy attorney general Moniruzzaman Kabir said his office was preparing to lodge an appeal to the supreme court. “The High Court has accepted Shahadat’s bail plea today after it was earlier rejected by the lower court,” Kabir, the representative of the alleged 11-year-old victim, told AFP.

Shahadat, who has played 38 Tests for Bangladesh, has been in custody since October 5 when he handed himself into police, a day after his wife Nritto Shahadat was arrested in the same case. She was granted bail last week. Both face charges of assaulting a child and employing a minor. The couple went into hiding after police raided their house in September as their maid was found crying on a street in the capital Dhaka.

The child has told police and local media that the couple beat and tortured her, while television footage showed her looking frail and thin with swollen black eyes. Police have said one of her hands had been burnt with a hot cooking paddle, while other injury marks were also found on her body.