Pharmacist accused of killing her three babies

A mother appeared in court yesterday accused of murdering her three babies by crushing or smothering them.

One of Trupti Patel's sons was 15 days old when she is alleged to have squeezed his chest or obstructed his nose and mouth to stop him breathing. It was a method the Crown alleges that Mrs Patel, a pharmacist aged 35, had already used to murder another son and would repeat with a daughter.

The deaths of Mrs Patel's sons, Amar and Jamie, within 18 months of each other, were initially put down to sudden infant death syndrome (Sids), commonly known as cot death. But two years later, when her daughter Mia died aged 22 days, the police were called in.

Paul Dunkels QC, for the prosecution, told Reading Crown Court: "It is the prosecution's case that this defendant killed three of her own children when they were babies – that she did so by restricting or obstructing the breathing of each child, either by squeezing the baby's chest so that it could not expand in order to breathe, or by in some way obstructing the nose and mouth of the baby so that it could not inhale, or by a combination of both methods.

"In each case, we say she prevented the breathing for so long that the babies were taken beyond the point of effective resuscitation.

"For a mother to kill her own children in this way is against nature and instinct as we would normally understand it. But the prosecution says that the evidence will demonstrate that Trupti Patel must have done this to her three babies."

Ms Patel, who at the time of the deaths lived in Maidenhead, Berkshire, denies killing Amar on 10 December 1997, Jamie on 6 July 1999 and Mia on 5 June 2001.

Mr Dunkels told the jury of 11 men and one woman that Amar was born on 5 September 1997 by Caesarean section at Wexham Park Hospital in Slough. Thirteen and a half weeks later Mrs Patel called an ambulance. Paramedics arrived to find the baby on his back on the living room and his mother "hysterical". Amar was taken to High Wycombe General Hospital where he was pronounced dead. Mrs Patel and her husband Jayant, 35, told hospital staff that Amar had been coughing since the previous night and that they had gone to comfort him at 4am. Mrs Patel said that when she returned more than five hours later, Amar was "limp and not breathing", the jury was told.

A post-mortem examination concluded that Amar died of Sids.

Jamie Patel, the jury was told, had been born with no complications on 21 June 1999, also by Caesarean section. Apart from a benign skin rash for which he was prescribed antibiotics, he was said by hospital staff to be a healthy baby. He died aged 15 days.

When the couple's third child, Mia, was born she was tested extensively to check for risk of a sudden collapse and any inherited disorder. Twenty-two days later she was dead.

Once again, paramedics were called to the house to find Mrs Patel attempting resuscitation.

The two pathologists who performed a post-mortem examination found evidence consistent with a prolonged episode of interrupted breathing and four fractured ribs, something which would have required a "considerable amount of force", Mr Dunkels told the court. Medical testing found no evidence of disease, infection, illness, metabolic respiratory or cardio-vascular problems, he added.

"Each death was investigated thoroughly by doctors and a range of experts and no medical cause has ever been found for the natural collapse of these babies," he said.

After Mia's death, Mrs Patel was interviewed by police about the deaths of the three children. In May 2002 she was arrested and charged with their murders. She denies the charges. The case continues.