Around 200 men and women gathered on a road in front of Sony Cinema Hall in Dhaka’s Mirpur at around 1:00 pm yesterday, Tuesday. They were waiting for a Trading Corporation of Bangladesh (TCB) truck expected to arrive to sell essential goods at subsidised prices. But among the crowd, one scene stood out.

Seventy-year-old Salema Begum was holding a chain, and that chain was tied to the leg of 15-year-old teenager Saiful Islam. She brought her grandson, tied with a chain, to buy oil and lentils from the TCB truck.

Saiful Islam is a person with special needs by birth and cannot understand his own well-being or safety. He has gone missing three times before. After the most recent incident last year, when he went missing from Mirpur and was later found by police in Narayanganj, Salema Begum now keeps him chained to prevent him from getting lost again. As there is no one at home to watch him, she had no choice but to bring him along while coming to buy TCB goods.