Armaan Singh Sarai, a 12-year-old boy from Arlington, Texas, was put behind bars after joking with his classmate that he had a bomb in his backpack according to a Facebook post his cousin wrote.
Sarai was kept in jail for three days before being released on Monday. His cousin, Ginee Haer, shared a post on Facebook that had gone viral and has been well received by the Internet since.
When Sarai didn't make it home from school last Friday, his parents became worried and called up all the police stations in the area only to find that their son was in a juvenile facility. Police say that they had visited Nichols Junior High School, where Sarai studies, upon hearing that a student had told a teacher that Sarai was planning to blow up the school, according to First Post.
Haer mentioned in her post that Sarai had moved to Dallas, Texas around three to four months ago and that he had a heart condition that prevented him from going outside. It is due to this heart condition that he had to incur three open heart surgeries. He is described as being funny, nice and caring by his family and his friends. Sarai's family say that he was framed, according to The Times of India
The public remains convinced that it was indeed a prank that sent Sarai behind bars, but the family of the children, as well as the authorities, are on disagreement as to who is to blame for this.
"People have got to learn they cannot make these types of threats, which cause alarm, which cause evacuations," police spokesman Lt. Christopher Cook said. "Just because you say it's a joke, it doesn't get you out of trouble."
The police had known that the bomb threat was just a hoax, but they still took Sarai into custody after he confessed to making up the threat. However, his family deems it unfair that their son had to spend three days in custody at a juvenile detention centre that houses teenagers being accused of drug possession and theft.
He now has to wear an ankle monitor while he is under house arrest while he waits for a court date, according to The Dallas Morning News.
Sarai's story follows the same public impact as that of Ahmed Mohamed, a Muslim teen who was suspected of carrying a bomb to school when it was in fact a home-made clock.
