A woman who accidentally killed her young neighbour while trying to get rid of bed bugs has walked free from court.
Jesmin Akter, 34, illegally imported aluminium phosphide from Italy to her flat in Nida House, Tower Hamlets, east London.
She then failed to read the packaging before scattering it around her flat, taking her own family out for 24 hours.
The substance reacted with moisture creating phosphine – a gas considered to be on a par with chemical warfare agents.
It seeped into a neighbouring flat killing Fatiha Sabrin on her 11th birthday.
The Old Bailey heard that Akter’s mother bought the substance in Bangladesh and took it to Italy. Akter then brought it to the UK on a passenger jet in November 2021. Judge Alexia Durran said these actions could have caused a ‘catastrophic mid-air incident and put hundreds of lives at risk’.
Akter admitted manslaughter and was handed a two-year suspended prison sentence along with 150 hours of community service.
Outlining the reason for the sentence, Judge Durran 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. 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.’
Fatiha’s father, Mohammed Islam, described his daughter as an ‘amazing, intelligent child who made friends with everyone and was a great help to her mother’.
The court heard that there had been problems with bedbugs in the block of flats but the landlord had only taken cursory action with little training for staff.
Shortly after Akter put the tablets down, other occupants and their children began to feel unwell.
Prosecutor James Dawes KC said the levels of phosphine gas which escaped into the Fatiha’s home was estimated as being up to 26 times the known lethal dose.
Fatiha woke at 4am on the morning of December 11 complaining to her mother Kaniz that she needed the toilet and was vomiting.
Her parents called her GP, 111 and 999 at 9.30am. Paramedics told her to take diarrhoea medication and eat plain food.
When other residents started coughing, raising fears of an outbreak of Covid. By 1.30pm, Fatiha’s condition had deteriorated. Two hours later she had stopped breathing and was unconscious before dying just before 5pm.
Firefighters declared a hazardous materials incident and further checks found the poison.
Mr Dawes said: ‘Because the first attendance of London Ambulance and Fire Brigade had been done without full protective equipment, there was concern at the time as well.’
When questioned, Akter said she did not realise that there would be a risk of danger to her neighbours.
He added that she had expressed ‘deep remorse’ and tried to help Fatiha, unaware that she had caused her illness.
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’.
Akter apologised to Fatiha’s family who had ‘paid the price’ for her actions.
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