A couple who caused the death of their three-year-old son by following an “extreme” vegan diet and then buried his body in their garden have both been handed lengthy jail terms.
Tai and Naiyahmi Yasharahyalah, aged 42 and 43, showed no obvious emotion in the dock as a judge said they had both “played a part in starving” Abiyah Yasharahyalah when it would have been obvious he needed medical care.
A High Court judge, sitting at Coventry Crown Court, sentenced Tai to 24-and-a-half years and Naiyahmi, who appeared in court wearing a white fur-style coat, to 19-and-a-half years.
Mr Justice Wall said the fact the couple had taken no photographs of the boy in the last four months of his life was “a clear sign that you realised by then how sick he was.”
The couple were sentenced on Thursday, a week after they were found guilty of perverting the course of justice, causing or allowing the death of a child, and what was described as “breathtaking” child neglect.
A two-month trial was told Abiyah died in early 2020 from a respiratory illness, with a more than minimal cause of his death being severe malnourishment which led to rickets, anaemia and stunted growth.
Jurors also heard London-born Tai, a medical genetics graduate who also used the first name Tai-Zamarai, and former shop worker Naiyahmi shunned mainstream society and left Abiyah’s body buried at their property in Handsworth, Birmingham, when they were evicted in March 2022.
Passing sentence on the couple, Mr Justice Wall said: “Abiyah died as a result of your wilful neglect of him. He was severely stunted in his growth – at almost four years of age he was buried in the clothes of an 18-month-old.
“I accept that there was no deliberate infliction of physical injury by either of you.”
But the judge added: “It is difficult to imagine a worse case of neglect than that which the court has encountered in this case.”
Although the couple had enjoyed the benefits of the NHS during the first 30 years of their own lives, the judge said, they had “denied this advantage to Abiyah for misplaced ideological reasons”.
“I am sure each of you played a part in starving him and failing to get medical care for him when the need for it was obvious to you.”
