Couple show no emotion in court after starving and burying three-year-old son

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.”

A post-mortem examination of Abiyah’s “skeletal” remains and other tests failed to identify how he died, but suggested he was also suffering from severe dental decay and six fractures to his right arm, legs and ribs, possibly caused by a fall about six weeks before his death.

The trial was told the couple, themselves in serious ill health due to their diet, were eventually arrested in 2022 while living in a caravan in Glastonbury, Somerset, having previously spent time living in a shipping container.

The pair, whose diet largely consisted of nuts, raisins and soya milk, were both extremely thin when they were arrested on December 9 2022, leading to the discovery of their son’s body five days later.

Jurors heard that police visited their home in Clarence Road, Handsworth, three times – in February 2018 when Abiyah was alive, again in September 2021 after his death, and then in March 2022 to assist in the couple’s removal for non-payment of rent.

Tai and his wife, who was born in Birmingham, denied the charges against them, telling the court they did not act wilfully and believed Abiyah would recover from a flu-like condition.

During the sentencing, the judge referred to Tai as “Teez” and said the couple had shown no genuine remorse, and had even been abusive to neighbours and police inquiring about Abiyah’s whereabouts.

He told Naiyahmi: “You bear slightly less responsibility because Teez and not you was the motivating force behind this lifestyle.

“But you were not a victim of domestic abuse, coercion, intimidation or the like. You freely adopted his views and embraced his lifestyle. Your bear very significant culpability for what happened.”

The judge told the defendants: “You were driven to develop this system by your distrust of big pharma and other Western organisations. You came to believe that any contact with the authorities would result in your data being obtained and misused in ways which you were not convincingly able to explain in evidence.

“By the time of Abiyah’s exhumation there was nothing left but his skeleton.

“You both claimed in evidence that Abiyah was happy and healthy right up until his last short illness. That was simply untrue. Many of the signs of his disease were obvious. I am sure that you did not miss them.”

Addressing the manner in which Abiyah’s body was hidden, the judge continued: “You buried him as you did, I am sure, not because you had a belief that this was the culturally appropriate way to dispose of his body, but primarily because you knew that any investigation into the causes of Abiyah’s death would lay you open to prosecution, which you wanted to avoid.

“I regret to say that I cannot accept your remorse as genuine. Had it been so, you would have accepted that you had acted in a criminal way.”

Before sentence was passed, Tai’s barrister told the court his client had been attacked twice since he was remanded in custody after being found guilty.

Charles Sherrard KC told the court one of the attacks had been committed in a holding area while Tai, who appeared in the dock with a two-inch linear red mark between his eyebrows, was being brought to court.