Kin weeps for mother, not the daughter she killed

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Kin weeps for mother, not the daughter she killed
By Michele Mandel, Toronto Sun
First posted: Wednesday, June 17, 2015 08:48 PM EDT | Updated: Wednesday, June 17, 2015 10:05 PM EDT
BRAMPTON - Not a word of sorrow for Niyati Jha.
Not a single victim impact statement about the tremendous loss of a three-year-old child beaten to death by her mother Nandini. Not from her father. Not from her sister.
Instead, all the letters filed in court at Jha’s sentencing were about the poor suffering mother found guilty of manslaughter.
“Poor” her? What about the poor daughter she killed?
Even when allowed to make a statement before Justice Deena Baltman, Jha made it all about herself: how hard it’s been to be out on bail on house arrest, how difficult it is to be separated from her three surviving children who now live out west with her husband, what a struggle it has been to leave her native India for Canada only to find her golden dream destroyed.
“This happiness was not in our destiny,” she complained in Hindi, her words translated by an interpreter. “Me and my family are leading the life like prisoners for the past four years without any guilt. That is impacting badly on the children’s future.
“I pray to God and to you, to free me from this physical and mental torture.”
Interesting word: torture. Her thin slip of a daughter, long dark hair and black eyelashes, was hit in the head with such force that her brain shifted and swelled so that brain matter actually oozed out of her ear. But that wasn’t Niyati’s first head injury. An autopsy would reveal a battery of healed wounds, including a previous skull fracture.
In her long, two-page statement, what did this mother say of her second child, who died after her injured brain finally grew so swollen that the cerebellum and brain stem were forced through the hole in the base of her skull into her spinal column, cutting off her blood supply? Just this line alone: “After the accidental death of my daughter Niyati, only I know what I have gone through.”
A jury in April convicted Jha, 38, of manslaughter but acquitted her of second-degree murder. Many jurors were in the courtroom Wednesday to hear Crown attorneys Andrea Esson and Jill Prenger urge the court to impose a stiff 15-year sentence.
Defence lawyer Sharon Jeethan argued Jha, isolated and stressed taking care of two children while her husband worked long hours, should serve just a five-year penitentiary term.
Esson told the judge she should find Jha also caused the child’s earlier, non-fatal injuries and that the final beating was “not an isolated incident” but the end of a “continued course of assaults on a three-year-old.”
In addition to her earlier skull fracture, Niyati had a mending broken 11th rib, a healing fracture to one of her vertebrae between her shoulder blades, old and new optic nerve bleeding and scars covering her forearms, thighs, neck, back, chest and even behind her ear.
Jha blamed “naughty” Niyati’s injuries on normal childhood play and a falling bookcase — excuses the prosecutor called “patently false.”
Niyati was unconscious when her parents took her to a walk-in clinic near their Mississauga home on Sept. 20, 2011. Jha insisted nothing unusual happened that morning while her husband was at work — her daughter simply ate a cookie and then took a nap.
She was declared brain dead the following day at Sick Kids.
Jha has never accepted responsibility or expressed any remorse, Esson reminded the judge. Her tears were “never tears of sadness for her child but tears because she feels sorry for herself.”
No one weeps for Niyati, only for the mom who beat her to death.
The letter from the dead girl’s older sister said she still doesn’t believe her mother is responsible. “Seriously, who would kill their own child?” asked the 10-year-old.
Who indeed?
Her husband said they came here in 2010 from New Delhi so they could give their children a better future. “Nandini is excellent mother and never hurt the children or made me feel she would hurt them,” Sarojanand Jha insisted. “Niyati especially was most close to her mother.”
Despite the verdict and all the evidence, he still blindly insists Jha is the victim here.
No, no one cries for Niyati, leaving only a judge to speak for her now. Baltman will deliver her sentence next month.
Read Mandel Wednesday through Saturday.
michele.mandel@sunmedia.ca
Nandini Jha and daughter Niyati.

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