Granny drugs, tries to burn boy for insurance

A grandmother in the Czech Republic was jailed on Thursday after giving her young grandson a cocktail of booze and drugs and trying to burn him to death in her house, local media reported.

The unidentified woman was sentenced to 16 years for attempted murder and for an insurance scam in which she tried to wheedle over four million koruna (148,000 euros, $166,000; Dh600,000) out of local insurers for the fire, the CTK news agency said.  

After knocking out her 13-year old grandson with a mixture of wine and sedatives at her village home last summer, she torched the house, but they escaped after a plucky neighbour came to the rescue.

The woman, who was said to suffer from a personality disorder, had faced the loss of her home because of unpaid debts of around 400,000 koruna and had been abandoned by members of her family, the court said.

Before the fire, she had written to the debt collectors to warn them they would be responsible for the loss of two lives, but later tried to scam the insurance company by claiming the cause of the fire was unknown.

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