SOURCE: The Straits Times

FOR an hour on Jan6 this year, toddler Natalie Nikie Alisyia Sallehan was home alone with her infant sisters while her parents went out to buy her a present for her second birthday.

When they returned to find she had made a mess of her father’s cigarettes, Sallehan Allaudin, 26, flew into a rage and shouted at her – then allegedly kicked and stamped on her.

Nikie, 78cm tall and weighing 10kg, died of a ruptured vein. Her father faces the death penalty for murder.

Yesterday, on the first day of Sallehan’s trial, his wife showed on a mannequin how he had allegedly stepped on their child in the kitchen of their flat.

Madam Rozanah Mohamed Yusoff’s version of the beating is being disputed by her husband’s lawyer, who accused the 24-year-old woman of being the one to cause Nikie’s death by hitting her with a broom. Madam Rozanah denies this.

She was calm yesterday as she recounted the events of that day, glancing at her husband a few times with no emotion on her face.

Nikie was her oldest child with Sallehan, her second husband. She has an eight-year-old son from her first marriage.

Nikie was 23 months old when she died. The other two girls were just over a year and two months old. The family of five lived in a two-room rental flat in Boon Lay. At about 6.30pm on Jan6, the couple went out, leaving their three daughters sleeping in the flat.

Sallehan bought two dolls, and a tin of milk powder for their youngest daughter. Madam Rozanah said he wanted to buy a doll for Nikie’s birthday and to be fair to their second daughter, bought one for her as well.

When they arrived home, he walked in first, and she said she could hear him instantly shouting at Nikie for playing with his cigarettes. Coming in, she saw broken sticks of cigarettes on the living room floor, sofa and mattress.

Madam Rozanah said Sallehan slapped Nikie on her face and arms as the child sat crying on the kitchen floor. “I did not go into the kitchen to stop my husband as I thought that was the way he wanted to discipline Nikie,” she said.

She then attended to the other daughters, who were crying in the bedroom.

She said she walked out minutes later to see Sallehan kicking and stepping on the seated child’s back, her upper body bent forward, and the left side of her face pressed to the floor.

She said she stopped her husband. When Nikie became breathless and started bleeding from the nose, the couple called an ambulance. She was pronounced dead at 9.30pm.

Madam Rozanah said that before that incident, Sallehan might pinch Nikie with his fingers and it was “normal” for him to bite their daughters when playing with them.

Her husband’s lawyer, Mr N. Kanagavijayan, however, contended that the girl fell on her knees after she was slapped and punched by his client but it was Madam Rozanah who then hit Nikie on the back with a broomstick.

The lawyer alleged that she repeatedly told Sallehan not to implicate her, or their two children would be left without parents. She flatly denied the lawyer’s allegations.

Also taking the stand yesterday was Madam Rozanah’s younger brother, Mr Mohamed Ariff Mohamed Yusoff, who said he once got into a scuffle with Sallehan for slapping Nikie.

Madam Rozanah’s mother, Madam Noraini Ibrahim, said she felt that Sallehan loved all his children.

The trial is scheduled to run for nine days.