A woman has been handed a suspended jail sentence for accidentally killing her 11-year-old neighbour with toxic gas she used to combat a bedbug infestation in her London flat. Jesmin Akter, 34, admitted manslaughter by committing an unlawful act and importing a regulated substance after the poisoning in Tower Hamlets on 11 December 2021.
Akter had illegally imported aluminium phosphide from Italy without a licence and distributed the tablets around her flat. The substance reacted with moisture to produce phosphine gas, which seeped into neighbouring flats. Fatiha Sabrin died on her 11th birthday after inhaling the poison, and another child was hospitalised.
Sentencing Akter at the Old Bailey, Judge Alexia Durran noted the landlord's inadequate response to the bedbug problem but said Akter's decision to bring the pesticide on a passenger flight could have caused a 'catastrophic mid-air incident'. She said Akter was 'overwhelmed with crippling guilt' and that the sentence would seem inadequate to Fatiha's family.
The court heard that Fatiha woke at 4am feeling unwell and died in hospital shortly before 5pm. The level of phosphine in her home was estimated to be between two-and-a-half and 26 times the lethal dose. Akter initially told police she bought the substance in a shop but later admitted her mother had brought it from Bangladesh.
Akter expressed remorse, saying she did not read the packaging and was desperate after the landlord failed to resolve the infestation. She received a two-year sentence suspended for two years and 150 hours of unpaid work.
