A mother-of-two has been spared jail after accidentally killing her neighbour’s daughter on her 11th birthday with illegally-imported poisonous gas she used to exterminate bedbugs.
Jesmin Akter, 34, failed to read the packaging before using a deadly amount of aluminium phosphide she had brought in on a flight from Italy to deal with an infestation in her east London flat in 2021.
After spreading the poisonous substance around the property in Nida House, Tower Hamlets, Ms Akter took her own family out for 24 hours.
The substance, which she later admitted had been brought to Italy from Bangladesh by her mother, reacted with moisture creating the poisonous gas phosphine, which has been likened to chemical warfare agents.
It seeped into neighbouring flats, killing Fatiha Sabrin on her 11th birthday and causing another young child to be taken to hospital on 11 December of that year.
Akter admitted manslaughter at the Old Bailey by committing an unlawful act and importing a regulated substance and was sentenced to two years in jail suspended for two years plus 150 hours of unpaid work.
Judge Alexia Durran noted there had been a problem with bedbugs in the block of flats and that the landlord’s efforts at dealing with it had been inadequate.
But by smuggling aluminium phosphide onto a passenger flight from Italy the month before, Akter could have caused a “catastrophic mid-air incident and put hundreds of lives at risk”, she said.
Within a “relatively short period” of Akter distributing the tablets in her flat, other occupants, including children in the block began to feel unwell, she said.
The judge referred to a moving statement from Fatiha’s “heartbroken” father, Mohammed Islam, who called his daughter an “amazing, intelligent child who made friends with everyone and was a great help to her mother”.
The judge said: “Fatiha died on her 11th birthday. It is now a date that haunts her family. The sentence I impose will not bring Fatiha back and will seem inadequate to Fatiha’s family.”
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The judge noted Akter’s previous good character and told her: “I understand you are overwhelmed with crippling guilt.
“It seems highly unlikely you will ever forget what happened to Fatiha was the result of your actions. A young life full of promise has been lost.”
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In a handwritten statement, Akter said she obtained the “anti-bedbug” product on the advice of her family but did not read the packaging.
She said she “did not know the produced contained a dangerous poison”, saying she was “desperate after the landlord tried and failed to get rid of the infestation”.
She apologised to Fatiha’s family who had “paid the price” for her actions.
