Imran Rana: I Bruised My Stepson's Face, But the Slap Was Only a 5 on a Scale of 10

Imran Rana, 23, told police that he had hit his three-year-old stepson across the face, causing a bruise noticed by a daycare worker.

But he had an excuse: The blow was only a “five” on a ten-point scale, and he was angry about a business deal gone sour.

A daycare employee noticed the boy was bandaged one day in March, and when the bandage slipped she saw a bruise around his eye. Police eventually interviewed Rana.

He said on videotape, according to court documents, that he had been watching the boy.

Rana told investigators “he was on the phone conducting a business call and was ‘pissed off’ because his client was backing out of a ten-thousand-dollar deal,” court documents say. “He stated when he hung up the phone [the boy] said ‘the B word.’ The defendant stated that he instinctively slapped [him] in the face.”

The case was first reported by KHOU.

Rana said he had been wearing “a bracelet that hung low on his wrist” and it was the bracelet “that must have made the large part of the bruising” on the boy’s eye and cheekbone.

Rana said he hit him with an open hand and not a fist.

He has been charged with reckless injury to a child.