A mother who admitted smothering her infant daughter and dumping the body in a creek has walked free from court.
Sofina Nikat pleaded guilty to infanticide in September and was today sentenced to a 12-month community corrections order.
“Your pre-sentence custody of 529 days is, on any view, a period long in excess of any sentence of imprisonment I would have considered imposing on you,” Victorian Supreme Court Justice Lex Lasry said.
The charges were downgraded from murder to infanticide earlier this year, which carries a maximum of five years in jail.
Nikat was suffering depression when she suffocated her 15-month-old, Sanaya Sahib, in April last year.
Justice Lasry described her death as a “tragedy for you and everyone connected with your family”.
“The complexity of the mental state of some women after child birth and for some time thereafter is not to be underestimated, particularly when it is made more difficult by the surrounding circumstances which occurred in your case,” he said.
The court heard Nikat had left her husband, who she wed in an arranged marriage, before Sanaya’s death and had been living in a women’s shelter.
Sanaya’s father and grandparents weren’t in court for the sentencing, with Detective Acting Inspector Stuart Bailey citing the “emotional toll” her death had on them as the reason.
Sanay’s aunt, Zahraa Sahib, said the family were disappointed and upset by the outcome.
“We had no justice for her death,” she said outside court.
“We were expecting something and it just completely failed us, and I don’t think it’s very fair that we’ve lost our little girl and there’s nothing for her.”
Nikat initially told police she and her daughter were walking in Melbourne’s Olympic Park on Saturday afternoon when a shoeless African man smelling of alcohol took the baby out of her stroller and ran away with her.
She gave a “full confession” to Victorian police three days later.
