A mum and her lover have this morning been found guilty of the manslaughter of her eight-year-old daughter – but cleared of murder.
Polly Chowdhury, 35, and Kiki Muddar, 43, were found guilty of killing Ayesha Ali following a month-long trial at the Old Bailey. The jury was out for nearly a fortnight.
Both women held their heads in their hands as the verdicts were delivered.
Ayesha was found dead in the flat that they shared in Broomfield Road, Chadwell Heath, on August 29, 2013.
She weighed just three and half stone when paramedics found her cold, stiff and naked except for a pair of pink pants on the floor of her bedroom.
The little girl had sustained more than 50 injuries in hours leading up to her death, including bites, carpet burns and bruises.
A post-mortem found that she died of a head injury with damage evident to the brain and around the optic nerve.
Muddar, who called the emergency services to the flat, was initially treated as a witness before becoming a suspect herself. She had made the little girl take a cold bath as punishment for wetting herself on the day of her death.
During the trial, it emerged that Kiki Muddar created a whole network of characters to control her girlfriend.
These included Skyman, a fictitious Muslim spirit, and Jimmy Chowdhury, who Chowdhury fell in love with. She also believed that she could have sex with him “through the medium of Kiki”.
Muddar made about 15 fake Facebook profiles to make her network of imaginary people seem real, including one for a non-existent boyfriend whom she claimed had raped her.
She also lied about having cancer to a friend whose son was undergoing treatment for leukaemia, and told her that a different fictitious boyfriend, Dave, had been killed in the London riots.
Chowdhury and Muddar had blamed each other over the girl’s death, which happened with a “background of prolonged abuse – some might even consider it torture”, the court heard.
Muddar, of Green Lane, Ilford, did not give evidence in court but claimed that she stayed at her parents’ house on the night that Ayesha died.
Chowdhury said she was on her computer in the living room at the time that Ayesha received her fatal injury.
They have been remanded in custody and will be sentenced in the same court on Friday.
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