Mikaeel Kular's mum has today (Tuesday, July 8) appeared in court charged with beating her son to death.
Rosdeep Kular sparked a massive manhunt in Edinburgh after reporting her three-year-old son Mikaeel missing in January.
Kular, going under her married name of Adekoya, came before Edinburgh High Court this morning (Tuesday) for a preliminary hearing. She faced two charges: murder, and attempting to defeat the ends of justice by hiding the toddler's body and reporting him missing.
The indictment presented by the Crown alleges that Adekoya, a beauty therapist, attacked her son at home over a four-day period between January 12 and January 15.
According to the indictment, she struck Mikaeel repeatedly on the head and body and failed to seek medical help for him. The Scotsman reports that the attack included hitting the boy against a hard object and causing blunt-force trauma injuries to his head and body.
A second charge claims that she then tried to cover her tracks by dumping the body - found wrapped in a duvet cover inside a suitcase - in the wooded area behind a relative's home in Kirkcaldy.
She is then said to have reported her son missing, telling police that she woke up to find that the boy had disappeared from the family home in the early hours of the morning, his coat and shoes gone.
Over the next 36 hours, a large-scale search operation involving the emergency services and hundreds of volunteers combed the streets looking for any trace of Mikaeel.
The search finally came to a grisly end when the child's body was discovered in woodland behind a relative's home, 30 miles away from their flat in Edinburgh.
Rosdeep Kular was detained soon after, and has since been awaiting trial at Corton Vale prison.
A death certificate released by police in March revealed that Mikaeel had died of peritonitis and internal bleeding, but this is the first time that the public has heard the specific charges against Adekoya, in accordance with Scottish law.
Adekoya has yet to enter a plea. The case has been continued until July 25.