MAKKAH: A woman who killed and tortured her seven-year-old stepdaughter has been sentenced to death by a General Court in Makkah. The woman’s husband, who is the child’s biological father, was sentenced to 15 years in jail.
The general prosecutor debated the case for several hours and read out all files concerning the case before the judge pronounced the sentence. The stepmother and father’s confessions to murdering the girl, called Kalthom, were also read out. Kalthom’s biological mother, however, rejected the verdict and called for a harsher sentence to be handed to the father.
According to prosecutors, Kalthom’s father was aware his daughter was being tortured and failed to stop his wife from harming her. Investigations found that the father encouraged his wife to hurt her to discipline her.
Kalthom was tortured so much that her entire body was covered in bruises. The stepmother also inserted sticks into her private parts.
After her death, the couple tried to hide their crime by taking the girl’s body to hospital and claiming she was injured after falling down some stairs while running away. The stepmother claimed she “gently” punished Kalthom for bedwetting and that she had then run away and fallen down.
The stepmother also claimed that Kalthom was her daughter, that her husband was away and that the man who brought them to hospital was a neighbor. Hospital staff and police, however, did not believe her and questioned the stepmother, who then collapsed and confessed to torturing her to death with the help and support of her husband.
The father also tried to cover up the crime by going to a police station posing as a neighbor in order to get a death certificate to bury the body. A subsequent autopsy showed that the child had brain hemorrhage and fresh injuries to her body and face.
