Mother jailed for stabbing her baby after arranged-marriage husband tried to force her to leave Britain

A desperate mother who was trapped in an arranged marriage tried to kill her baby after believing her husband was trying to force her to leave England without her daughter.

It is believed that the 25-year-old unnamed woman stabbed her eight-month-old daughter after her husband gave her a one-way ticket back to Bangladesh along with an injunction stopping her from taking their child out of Britain.

The woman, who pleaded guilty to attempted murder at an earlier hearing, was sentenced to five years in prison this morning at the Old Bailey.

According to reports, the young mother was a student in Bangladesh when her family married her off to her cousin, who then brought her to live with his family in east London in August 2007.

The woman, who did not speak any English, was not allowed to work, go out on her own and depended on her husband’s family for everything she needed.

Last June she gave birth to her daughter, and in February after getting into a fight with her husband, she told him she wanted to leave and he told her that she could go, but she could not take their daughter with her. At that time, it is believed she told him, “If I can’t have her then no one will.”

Prosecutor Heather Norton said, “On March 2, he [the husband] visited a travel agents and purchased an airline ticket to Bangladesh for the defendant to fly out the following day.”

That same day, her husband took out an injunction forbidding his wife from taking their daughter out of the country, and when he got home, he gave her the ticket and some luggage, and then had a solicitor come to the house to explain the injunction to his wife.

The woman became upset, claiming her husband had assaulted her, but then calmed down and asked him to make some food for the baby.

When he returned to the living room, he saw the baby lying on a sofa and his wife standing over her.

At first, the husband said he thought his wife was zippering the baby’s pajamas, and then he realized she “had a knife in her hand that she was trying to conceal,” so he ran to the child and saw “the defendant push the knife into her stomach, skewering the blade through her belly button,” Norton said.

“He grabbed the baby, pressing his hand against the wound and carrying her upstairs followed by the defendant, still with the knife in her hand, and his brother grabbed the defendant, disarmed her, and restrained her,” Horton continued.

The child, who suffered a 1.6-inch wound caused by the knife, has made a complete recovery and is living with the family of her 26-year-old father.