Nasir Ali, who inflicted horrific injuries on a two-year-old girl he was asked to look after “for ten minutes”, did not “tolerate independence of mind” and had “strict ideas about how children should be brought up”, according to his sentencing judge.
The 34-year-old from Brideoak Street, Cheetham Hill, was convicted of intent to cause grievous bodily harm after inflicting injuries on par with a 70 mile-per-hour car crash or a fall from a building on the toddler, the Manchester Evening News reports.
The court heard that Ali — who denied any wrongdoing — had likely become angry with the child at a park near her mother’s house. He then took her to his parents’ home in Rochdale and launched a savage attack.
The two-year-old was left with “thirty deliberate injuries”, amongst them a fractured skull and a bleed on the brain.
“She became immediately unwell, [and] in an act of cold calculation and self-preservation you chose not to tell her mother, you drove her back and left her there,” noted the judge.
“When the mother became aware that she was making groaning noises you pretended not to know why. You displayed no concern for the child in the aftermath [of the attack].”
The child’s life was saved by emergency surgical intervention at the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital — but she has been left brain damaged and permanently disabled, and doctors say she will have the appearance of a person who has suffered a severe stroke.
“This is a grave crime, the evidence which the jury heard provided a chilling insight into your character and sense of morality and humanity,” said the judge.
“Before this incident the child you injured was a very bright, delightful, happy child with all of her future ahead of her. She had a loving family, a devoted father, a loving sister, a wider extended family.”
She added: “It must have been a ferocious assault on a defenceless two-year-old child. You have a short temper, you don’t tolerate independence of mind, you have strict ideas about how children should be brought up.”
However, whilst concluding that Ali had “shown no remorse”, has a “vicious streak”, an “explosive temper”, and posed “a significant risk of causing serious harm to others”, the judge handed down a sentence of only 14 years.
Typically, criminals in the United Kingdom are automatically paroled halfway through their sentences, serving the remainder “on license in the community”.
Members of the public can ask the Attorney-General’s Office to appeal for a stronger sentence under the Unduly Lenient Sentence scheme, but it is not clear whether anyone has done so.