Mumbai: A 25-year-old woman accused of beating her three-year-old son to death in 2016 was acquitted by a sessions court. Aasma Shaikh had allegedly hit and kicked her younger son, Umer after he repeatedly clung to her and cried when she wanted to go to the market to buy medicines.
The victim was the younger of two brothers. Aasma was arrested soon after the incident on August 12, 2016, and booked for culpable homicide not amounting to murder. She was granted bail a month later.
The prosecution said that on August 3, 2016, Aasma’s sister, her children, and a cousin were at home. Umer had been unwell. At 11 pm, when Aasma was going out buy medicines, Umer insisted on going with her. When attempts to pacify him failed, Aasma allegedly hit him. It was submitted that her cousin took the child and Aasma left. The prosecution said that when Aasma returned and took Umer, he began to cry again. Fed up, Aasma allegedly hit him, and when he fell, she kicked him. The child cried himself to sleep.
Aasma’s sister had told police that while their cousin slept on the mezzanine floor with her younger daughter, her older child slept next to Umer on the ground floor. The woman said that later at night, her cousin brought her daughter to the ground floor as she was not sleeping. The woman told police that Aasma and she were watching TV while the baby crawled around. She said they noticed that Umer did not budge even when the baby crawled over him. Alarmed, her cousin touched Umer and found his body was cold. When attempts to revive him failed, Umer was rushed to Sion hospital, where he was declared dead.
Police initially registered an accidental death case, but the post-mortem found the death was because of “shock due to blunt trauma to the chest and abdomen (unnatural)”. Police found that Aasma had allegedly kicked the child on his chest and stomach in a fit of rage.
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