Goodmayes man jailed for murdering girlfriend’s toddler daughter

Syed Mohammed Kamran Haider, 39, attacked Nusayba Bint-Umar at his Colinton Road home on September 13, 2019.

She died four days later after suffering catastrophic brain injuries.

After the attack the toddler’s mother, Asiyah Amazir from Newham, called 999 and wrongly claimed her daughter had fallen ill on a bus.

Nusayba, who weighed just 17lb, was taken to hospital where she died on September 17.

Nusayba Umar who was sadly murdered by Kamran Haider, 39, of Colinton Road, Goodmayes (Image: Met Police)

Haider denied being responsible for Nusayba’s injuries but was found guilty of murder and child cruelty at the Old Bailey on Monday (March 28).

This morning - March 30 - Ms Justice Cheema-Grubb jailed the 39-year-old for life with a minimum term of 20 years, along with an 18 month term for cruelty to run concurrently.

As with Monday's hearing, he failed to attend court for sentencing.

The judge highlighted Haider's "propensity to abuse and control women and children who come into his sphere of influence", referring to evidence heard over the course of the trial from his ex-wife and another partner whose children he had also abused to “teach them a lesson”.

Describing how Nusayba's death was mostly likely caused by violent shaking, Ms Cheema-Grubb said there had been evidence of an impact.

"This was not an accident - it was a gross breach of trust by an adult toward a dependent baby," she said.

The judge continued: "The mother has sustained long term psychological harm.

"The father didn't even know who Haider was when she died and he has expressed a sense of helplessness.

"Haider wanted Nusayba's mother's assistance in his unlicensed dog breeding business, and the child got in the way. He was prone to temper tantrums and resented her need for her mother."

In a statement read out to court, Ms Amazir, who had met Haider through a dating website, said: “Nusayba was subjected to the most horrible experiences at the hands of this man towards the end of her life.

"I vividly remember the things she suffered, and that noise she made on the last day of her life will haunt me forever.”

She went on: "I will never get to see her grow up, hear her first full sentence, see her first day at school and all the beautiful milestones a mother gets to witness throughout her child's life.

"Something as simple as changing her nappy or doing her laundry is a heart breaking memory for me.

"There are a million more things I can't think of the words for to explain the immediate and lifelong impact of my daughter being murdered."

A statement was also read out on behalf of Nusayba's father, who was in court for the hearing.

He detailed how he had never met Haider when his daughter moved in with him.

"During this time I was only able to see my daughter once when I was called to say she was at hospital," he said.

"I struggled before her death that my child was living with a man I'd never met. When I found out she had been punished it made me angry."

He added: "Had I been aware of what was happening, I would have protected her.

"This one event has broken my life apart and I will never recover.

"When I go to bed at night, I wonder what I could have done differently to have avoided this."

The court had heard that Haider had become increasingly threatening towards mother and child in the week before her death.

He put Nusayba in a corner, hit her on the hand during “time out”, and made her adopt various “stress positions”.

It was claimed during the trial that if Ms Amazir tried to intervene he would slap her.

On the day of the murder, she heard Haider tell her daughter to “shut up”, followed by a slapping sound and “yelp”.

Det Ch Inspector Larry Smith, from Scotland Yard, described Haider as a “controlling and violent man” who was “prone to bouts of extreme aggression and violence”.