SINGAPORE — A woman who together with her husband ill-treated her two stepchildren, including starving them, was sentenced to six years and three months' jail on March 13.The children were so undernourished that they were found to be below the third percentile of their age group, which meant that 97 per cent of the other children in their age group were bigger and heavier than them.In sentencing the woman, District Judge Eugene Teo said: «This case involves the ill-treatment of the especially vulnerable, which stretched from hours, to days, to weeks, to months.»It is painfully ironic now to seek mercy when so little was shown to those two children."The woman's husband had earlier received an unprecedented sentence of 34.5 years' jail and 12 strokes of the cane on April 30, 2024, over the death of his daughter, Ayeesha.His sentence was increased to life imprisonment in July 2025, after his appeal for a reduced term failed.Ayeesha was five years old when she died in 2017 of a head injury inflicted by her father. Her brother, who survived the abuse, was about four years old then. Read more