18 years' jail for stepchild's death
2010/03/24
By V. Anbalagan
PUTRAJAYA: A former soldier escaped the death sentence following the public prosecutor's decision to reduce a charge for murder to one of causing the death of a 4-year-old girl.
The Court of Appeal yesterday sentenced Shahrul Izwan Ahmad Zaidi to 18 years' jail after he pleaded guilty to the amended charge.
Sentence begins from Jan 25, 2003, the day he was arrested.
The High Court in 2006 sentenced Izwan to death after finding him guilty of murdering Nur Syafrida Md Shukor, his stepdaughter, at a house in Kampung Pasir in Kamunting, Taiping, about 7pm on June 25, 2002.
The public prosecutor decided to reduce the charge as a prosecution witness had testified during the trial that Izwan had told her that he had no intention to murder the victim.
Izwan married the victim's mother who has three children from a previous marriage. One of them was Nur Syafrida.
According to the facts, Izwan took the victim to give her a bath in their house as the mother was then eight months pregnant.
About 30 minutes later, he carried Nur Syafrida and placed the girl on a mat to revive her. (It was not stated what happened to her.)
The victim was motionless and the accused then borrowed his friend's car to transport the body.
Nur Syafrida's body was buried in a shallow grave in Sungai Siput, about 50km from their home.
Later when the maternal grandfather came to visit the victim, the mother told him that the girl had gone missing during a visit to a nearby resort.
At the insistence of the grandfather, the victim's mother finally lodged a police report but in the course of the investigation, she revealed what actually happened.
Police recovered the skeletal remains of the girl in early January 2003.
Judges Datuk Suriyadi Halim Omar, Datuk Hasan Lah and Datuk Ahmad Maarop heard the appeal.
Deputy public prosecutor Saiful Edris Zainuddin appreared for the public prosecutor while K. Subramaniam represented Izwan.
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