Two-year ordeal ends as mother is cleared of killing three babies

Jury's acquittal of Trupti Patel raises questions over convictions of other women and the science that lies behind such cases

When the police came to Trupti Patel's Berkshire home in June 2001, she and her husband hoped they might help them find answers to the nightmare that had enveloped them for four years: the unexplained deaths of three of their children.

Instead, the tragedy that befell the young couple became even more horrific as Mrs Patel was investigated for the murders of Amar, Jamie and Mia, none of whom had lived longer than three months.

Yesterday, after a two-year police inquiry, an enforced separation from each other and their fourth child, aged eight, and a gruelling trial, the couple could finally resume their lives.

As a relieved Mrs Patel said, the fact that, after a six-week murder trial, the jury only needed a brief, 80-minute retirement before returning their innocent verdicts had said it all. "The jury just thought it was obvious," said Mrs Patel, clutching her husband, Jayant, outside Reading Crown Court.

Until the death of their second child, Amar, the Patels had everything going for them. Mrs Patel, whose parents came to England from the Punjab, was born in Bolton, gained a BSc at King's College London and trained as a pharmacist at Greenwich Hospital in London. While working there she met her husband, an electrical engineer who now works as a business analyst. After a few meetings, they began dating.

They married in 1991 in a civil ceremony, then at a traditional celebration in India, and set up home in Maidenhead. She became dispensary manager at the Churchill Hospital in Oxford.

The first time she fell pregnant in 1994, Mrs Patel suffered a miscarriage. Despite the trauma she became pregnant again just a few months later and her first child was born by emergency Caesarean section the next year. Their second child, Amar, arrived in 1997 and for a while everything seemed perfect. "We felt that our family was complete," Mrs Patel said.

When Amar collapsed and died aged just three months, the Patels' nightmare began. They tried again for a child and a second son, Jamie, was born in June 1999. He died 15 days later. The couple were "devastated" and barely able to speak. Both deaths were attributed by medical staff to sudden infant death syndrome.

A year later they tried for a baby again. When Mia was born on 14 May 2000, no one was taking any chances and mother and baby were monitored round the clock. Mia was moved to the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, for heart, breathing and sleep-pattern monitoring. A week later she went home. A breathing monitor was put under her cot mattress to warn of breathing problems.

Despite these precautions, Mia was found fighting for breath in her cot when she was 19 days old and died three days later in Great Ormond Street Hospital. As after the previous deaths, a post-mortem examination was done, but this time four broken ribs were found in Mia's chest, which compounded police suspicions and the investigation began.

A year passed before she was charged - an act that led to the couple's separation by social services from each other and their oldest child, who was taken into care. But the prosecution seemed flawed from the outset: police could not establish a motive and the case rested on the idea that three deaths was too much of a coincidence. There was a suggestion Mrs Patel suffered from sporadic intentions to kill her children.

The trial was told that the cracked ribs were probably due to resuscitation attempts and that Mrs Patel's babies probably died from a rare, newly discovered gene disorder known as Long Q Syndrome, which misses a generation before striking again. Her 80-year-old grandmother travelled from India to tell the jury how she had lost five of her 12 children and that three of the deaths were linked to the disorder.

After hearing this, the jury's verdict will be seen as an endorsement of the Patels and as posing serious questions for the prosecution.