Indian-origin woman kills autistic son, jailed in Britain

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A 45-year-old Indian-origin woman has been sentenced to seven years in prison by a British court for forcing her 12-year-old son to drink bleach.

Satpal Kaur Singh, 45, struggled to look after her autistic son Ajit and feared he would be taken away, the Old Bailey court in London heard.

Singh, a resident of Barking, east London, made her son drink a cup of Domestos in February 2010, just after she refused to co-operate with council staff at a meeting over his care.

She also drank some of the liquid herself. In a suicide note she said she had done it after being "scrutinised and hounded by social services", the Daily Mail reported.

She was Friday sent to jail for seven years after pleading guilty to manslaughter.

The judge told her: "I recognise how difficult Ajit was to care for. Your deteriorating mental health robbed you of proper insight into what was going wrong and erected real obstacles between you and people and the agencies that were trying so hard to help you."

The court heard that during a meeting with social services the day before she killed her son, Singh appeared "calm".

She later rang up police to say: "I've just murdered my son and I've tried to kill myself."

Police found the boy lying on a sofa, not breathing, with an "almost overpowering" smell of bleach in the air.

Singh later told police that "voices in her head" had been telling her, "You have to do it. Go for it, it's come to an end now".

Psychiatrists said the accused, originally from Manchester, was suffering from a mental disorder.

"This was a woman who loved her son too much. The belief she held, because of her mental disorder, was that hers was an act of mercy."