A vegan couple were jailed for a total of 44 years today after their obsession with ‘clean eating’ led to the death of their malnourished toddler.
Tai and Naiyahmi Yasharahyalah ‘played a part in starving’ three-year-old Abiyah, who was buried in their back garden after the pair established their own ‘kingdom’ in which they lived under their own religion and laws.
Jurors heard the defendants, both degree-educated, lived in squalor after turning their back on society, rejecting Western medicine and adhering to a strict diet – surviving on only nuts, fruit and seeds.
Tai, the 42-year-old son of a former Nigerian government official, was accused of ‘imposing Third World conditions’ on his family after falling down a ‘spiral of conspiracy’ which intensified during Covid.
The self-proclaimed life coach and music producer was jailed at for 24-and-a-half years Coventry Crown Court yesterday while 43-year-old Naiyahmi -who appeared in court wearing a white fur-style coat – received a 19-and-a-half year sentence.
Both were convicted last week of causing the death of Abiyah, child cruelty and perverting the course of justice.
Mr Justice Wall said the fact the couple had taken no photographs of the boy in the last four months of his life was ‘a clear sign that you realised by then how sick he was.’
The judge told them: ‘Abiyah died as a result of your wilful neglect of him. He was severely stunted in his growth – at almost four years of age he was buried in the clothes of an 18-month-old.
Tai, 42, and Naiyahmi Yasharahyalah, 43, (pictured on their wedding day) were sentenced at Coventry Crown Court today for causing the death of their son Abiyah and perverting the course of justice
Abiyah Yasharahyalah was subjected to ‘breathtaking arrogance and cruelty’ by his parents
A two-month trial was told the couple had opted out of society and set up their own ‘kingdom’ (pictured: A sign on the front door banned anyone from ‘making contact with any member of this house’)
‘I accept that there was no deliberate infliction of physical injury by either of you.’
But the judge added: ‘It is difficult to imagine a worse case of neglect than that which the court has encountered in this case.’
Although the couple had enjoyed the benefits of the NHS during the first 30 years of their own lives, the judge said, they had ‘denied this advantage to Abiyah for misplaced ideological reasons’.
‘I am sure each of you played a part in starving him and failing to get medical care for him when the need for it was obvious to you.’
The defendants were told they would serve at least half of their terms before being released on licence.
Abiyah was born in April 2016 and his birth was registered but Naiyahmi, 43, then broke contact with healthcare services.
As the couple became increasingly distrustful of the state, the helpless boy was hidden away and his death in January 2020 went unnoticed, and wasn’t registered. Officials only discovered the boy had died almost three years later.
Police visited the property in Handsworth, Birmingham, three times – in February 2018 when Abiyah was alive, in September 2021 after his death, and in March 2022 to assist in the couple’s eviction for non-payment of rent.
London-born Tai (left) was sentenced to 24-and-a-half years in prison and former shop worker Naiyahmi was sentenced to 19-and-a-half years respectively
The back garden of the home in Birmingham where the three-year-old’s body was found
Naiyahmi (left) and Tai Yasharahyalah (right) outside Coventry Crown Court on November 4
It was only after they moved on to a caravan in Somerset that police on a welfare check investigated their social media posts – and spotted an old video of Abiyah. When asked where the boy was, the couple admitted they had buried him and failed to register his death.
An investigation into the boy’s whereabouts was launched and Abiyah’s body was unearthed in December 2022.
Bernard Tetlow KC, for Tai, told the court his client accepts Abiyah’s death was ‘entirely his fault, adding the case was ‘bizarre’, ‘unusual’ and ‘very tragic’.
Charles Sherrard, defending Naiyahmi, said she ‘had a misguided but genuine belief that a naturalistic lifestyle was in her child’s best interests to the extent she was wilfully blind to the obvious signs of malnutrition and need for medical attention.’
Jurors heard Abiyah was neglected by being fed the inadequate diet and by a failure to seek medical help as he weakened from a fatal respiratory illness, which the Yasharahyalahs saod they had been ‘attacking’ with ginger and garlic.
They then lay with his body for eight days before ’embalming’ him with frankincense and myrrh and burying him in their garden under two feet of earth.
The couple said they did not know Abiyah was seriously ill, and thought he would be reincarnated after his burial.
But prosecutors said it would have been obvious, and accused them of ‘breathtaking arrogance and cruelty’.
Tai (left) and Naiyahmi (right) were convicted of causing or allowing Abiyah’s death
A police-issued photo of Abiyah Yasharahyalah with his father, Tai Yasharahyalah
Abiyah died ‘bed-bound from cold, so malnourished that his immune system was not working’, prosecutor Jonas Hankin KC said.
Pathologists found he suffered from rickets, anaemia and stunted growth, his decaying teeth were falling out and he had five fractures that would have caused terrible pain.
Mr Justice Wall told the defendants they had both claimed in evidence that ‘Abiyah was happy and healthy right up until his last short illness’. But the High Court judge added: ‘That was, I am sure, simply untrue.
‘He must have been in pain and, as a child of almost four, able to communicate that pain verbally as well as crying out or screaming.
‘If he was truly unable to do so, it can only have been because, by then, he was so ill he was barely aware of what was happening to him or incapable of reacting to it.’
The sentencing came 24 hours after a father and stepmother were convicted over the brutal murder of ten-year-old Sara Sharif in Surrey last year.
Urfan Sharif, a 42-year-old taxi driver, and wife Beinash Batool, 30, then fled to his native Pakistan alongside his brother, Faisal Malik, 29, who was convicted of causing or allowing her death.
They will be sentenced on Tuesday.
Abiyah was subjected to ‘breathtaking arrogance and cruelty’ by his parents
Abiyah’s skeletal remains were discovered by West Midlands Police in December 2022
When Abiyah fell ill with the symptoms of a cold, the couple treated him with natural remedies
A post-mortem on Abiyah’s ‘skeletal’ remains and other tests failed to identify how he died, but suggested he was also suffering from severe dental decay and six fractures to his right arm, legs and ribs, possibly caused by a fall six weeks before he died.
Abiyah was neglected by being given inadequate food and through a failure to summon any medical treatment as he battled a fatal respiratory illness.
The trial was told that police visited the property on Clarence Road in Handsworth three times.
Squalid conditions inside the Yasharahyalahs’ property in Handsworth, Birmingham
There was no milk or bread in the fridge at the couple’s house, West Midlands Police said
The interior of the property in Handsworth, Birmingham, where the Yasharahyalahs lived
The visits were in February 2018 when Abiyah was alive, again in September 2021 after his death, and then in March 2022 to assist in the couple’s eviction for non-payment of rent.
On the second occasion, police bodycam footage recorded officers asking if a child lived at the address and Tai becoming aggressive and being arrested for being obstructive.
The welfare check did not lead to Abiyah being identified as missing, due to confusion over records related to the address.
A child safeguarding practice review is ongoing into Abiyah’s death, examining police and other agencies’ involvement with him during his life.
The trial was told that instead of contacting the NHS, the couple – who told police they had renounced British citizenship and had an ‘off-grid’ existence – tried to treat their son’s final illness with garlic and ginger.
The couple were both ‘extremely thin’ when they were arrested on December 9 2022, leading to the discovery of their son’s body five days later.
Tai, who also used the first name Tai-Zamarai, and his wife, who was born in Birmingham to a Christian family, denied the charges against them, telling the court they did not act wilfully and believed Abiyah would recover from a flu-like condition.
Tai told police in interview that he had carried out an ‘eight-day ritual’ hoping that Abiyah would ‘come back’, but had eventually decided to conduct a burial in accordance with his culture on what he regarded as sacred ground.
A guitar balance on a radiator and a chair covered in junk at the Yasharahyalahs’ home
Police visited Tai Yasharahyalah at the property in Handsworth for a ‘safe and well’
He told jurors he had adopted polygamy but had rejected being an omnivore as part of his quasi-religious ‘kingdom’ – but accepted that he had been ‘foolish’ in following his own legal doctrine.
Although he had studied immunology and how diseases affect genes before graduating from Queen Mary University of London, Tai claimed he was unaware of the risks of a strict unsupplemented vegan diet.
Jurors heard that the couple met in the street while Tai, who moved to Birmingham in 2014, was busking and introduced himself to his future wife, whose original name was Donna Graham, as the ‘King’ of the Kingdom of Yasharahyalah.
The couple got married at a register office in September 2015 and ‘invented’ a belief system featuring aspects of Igbo culture that Tai, who grew up in both Nigeria and Peckham in South East London, adapted to form a legal system he called ‘slick law’.
The court heard that they lived off the generosity of others, occupying a shipping container and then a caravan in the Somerset area.
Post-mortem tests failed to ascertain the cause of Abiyah’s death because tests on soft tissue, which had decomposed, could not be carried out.
But experts were able to say that if the three-year-old died from a respiratory illness, as described by his parents, the effects of malnutrition would have been a ‘more than minimal’ cause of his death.
Police bodycam footage of the couple being removed from the caravan amid welfare concerns was also viewed by the jury, with Tai screaming at police about back problems and Naiyahmi appearing to read from a computer screen as she said: ‘Leave my personal private space, I am an indigenous person.’
An officer noticed coconuts were the only available sustenance at the property
The bathroom at the Yasharahyalahs’ property in Handsworth, Birmingham
After they were taken to hospital, Abiyah was spotted on social media posts recorded by Tai and when asked where the boy was, the couple admitted they had buried him and failed to register his death.
Opening the case for the Crown at the start of the trial, prosecutor Jonas Hankin KC claimed the couple had jointly neglected Abiyah by failing to provide him with enough food or any medical help.
Prosecutors alleged it would have been obvious to both defendants that Abiyah, whose teeth would have been wobbly, was in considerable pain from abscesses and other ailments.
Mr Hankin said: ‘This child started life small but normal, and over time he became abnormally small. Those features must have been discernible to his parents if, as they claim, they were caring, loving and attentive.’
Referring to a comment made by Abiyah’s mother that ‘nature has a way of doing things’, Mr Hankin added: ‘That is their attitude ‘We’re right and nature will decide’.’
‘It is breathtaking arrogance and cruelty,’ he added.
The couple’s lawyers argued that the couple had buried Abiyah in the hope he might be ‘born again’ and not in order to hide the death from the authorities.
Defence lawyer Bernard Tetlow KC told the trial: ‘Tai and Naiyahmi were not saying to themselves we realise our diet, we realise our healthcare is bad for us, but we are going to do it anyway.
A sewing machine at the property in Handsworth, Birmingham, which police visited
Bags on top of a mattress at the Yasharahyalahs’ property in Handsworth, Birmingham
‘They genuinely believed they were doing the right thing. They genuinely believed that their diet and the belief in natural and holistic medicines was the best way.’
Footage released after the couple were found guilty showed them arguing with police inside the property, while their son’s body lay buried in the back garden.
A film of the pair being defiant and aggressive towards police at their caravan in Somerset, almost three years after Abiyah’s death and makeshift funeral, was also issued by West Midlands Police following the verdicts.
Among police bodycam videos shown to the trial jury was one filmed by an officer during a welfare check at Clarence Road on September 2, 2021, during which Tai accused police of ‘trespassing’ in his self-professed ‘Kingdom of Yasharahyalah’.
After being informed that officers were there to check on concerns for people living at the property, Tai told police that his son’s whereabouts were none of the officers’ business.
Asked if any children were living at he address, Tai, who had buried his son’s body around 19 months previously, responded: ‘We have the right to remain silent. I am a citizen of Yasharahyalah – you have no jurisdiction in my realm.’
Tai was eventually arrested for obstructing police, but a mix-up related to a records relating to the address meant an inquiry into Abiyah’s whereabouts was not launched.
During the couple’s subsequent removal from a caravan they were living in in Somerset, Tai was also aggressive after complaining of a bad back.
A police photo of the back garden of the Birmingham home where the body was found
Coventry Crown Court heard Abiyah’s skeletal remains were discovered in December 2022
Footage from the caravan, which police attended due to welfare concerns about the severely ill couple, shows Naiyahmi telling a policewoman ‘I do not require your services’ and asking the officer to leave.
Tai was also recorded as he sat in the back of a police van, complaining that he was a ‘disabled person that can hardly move’ and that he wished police had Tasered him in the face.
The trial heard that five days after the couple were helped out of the caravan, it emerged from a social media video spotted by a social worker that Tai appeared to have a son who he referred to in the footage as Abiyah.
Naiyahmi, who was born in Birmingham, was confronted about the clip and said ‘oh shit’ and then ‘disengaged completely, refusing to provide any information’.
But Tai subsequently admitted Abiyah was dead, his death had not been registered ‘because it was not part of their culture’ and they had held a private ceremony and buried him in the garden at Clarence Road.
Following the disclosure, both defendants were arrested on suspicion of neglect leading to the death of a child.
Commenting after the couple were convicted, the senior investigating officer for the inquiry, West Midlands Police Detective Inspector Joe Davenport, said: ‘When officers started to investigate Tai and Naiyahmi Yasharahyalah, they then realised that there was a child missing called Abiyah.
‘When they asked around where Abiyah was, they initially denied the authorities any kind of information as to where he was, but eventually admitted that he had died in 2020 when they were living in Birmingham, and they had buried him in the back garden of their address in Clarence Road.’
The back garden of the home in Birmingham where the three-year-old’s body was found
Police outside the home on Clarence Road in Handsworth, Birmingham, in December 2022
The house on Clarence Road in Handsworth, Birmingham, where the body was found
An incredibly detailed investigation then took place, the senior officer said, with the first step being to exhume Abiyah’s body.
‘Because he’d been there for over two years there was very few remains left,’ Mr Davenport said. ‘It was basically skeletonised remains, which meant that it wasn’t possible under a forensic post-mortem to establish a cause of death.
‘So we had to call in different experts and different pathologists who could provide us with information to understand what Abiyah’s life would have been like and how he would have been at the point of his death.
‘What they were able to tell me was that at the point of his death, he was incredibly small for his age. He was extremely malnourished and his bones were incredibly weak, to the point that he had six bone fractures at different points across his body, and those fractures would have occurred about six weeks before his death.
‘In addition to that, he had incredibly poor oral health, and his teeth would have had abscesses. The picture that was painted was a child who was extremely neglected and in very poor condition at the point of his death, and his life would have been miserable to exist in, and he would have been in a significant amount of pain.’
The senior officer added that the couple’s claim that Abiyah died after contracting Covid-19 had been refuted by a respiratory expert.
‘What we’ve been able to prove through the forensic evidence is that he did die as a result of malnutrition and medical neglect,’ the senior detective said.
‘They state that when they went to bed with him on the night that he died, he was having breathing problems, and then the next day, they woke up to find him dead.
Tai and Naiyahmi Yasharahyalah lived ‘off grid’ at this caravan in Glastonbury, Somerset
Pictures from West Midlands Police show the dirty, cramped conditions in the caravan
Cupboards were overflowing and clothes were strewn all over the couple’s caravan
Prosecutors said the caravan was cold, dirty, cramped and foul smelling
The court was told that the caravan in Glastonbury was ‘clearly not fit for habitation’
The small amount of carpet on the floor of the caravan was saturated with urine
There were two buckets on the caravan floor – one of which contained frozen urine
‘At that point, they took no action to call an ambulance or to try and get him any kind of medical care, and instead took it upon themselves to pronounce him dead, and then buried him in the back garden eight days later.’
On September 2, 2021, the officer said, Tai had offered no information as to where Abiyah was and confusion around records related to the address led to a ‘missed opportunity’ to identify that Abiyah had died.
It is understood Abiyah did have an NHS number but his parents very quickly withdrew him from any kind of medical care, never took him to nursery, and no family or friends were allowed into his life.
A number of videos recovered as part of the inquiry, thought to have been filmed during a period at least four months before Abiyah’s death, show him smiling with both his parents.
In one clip, he apparently videoed himself with his mother in the background, while another clip shows Tai talking to his son, who smiles and laughs as music is played.
Det Insp Davenport said the couple’s belief system involved living ‘off the grid’ with no kind of external support from the state.
‘They lived a completely isolated life,’ he said. ‘They didn’t allow anyone into their home in any way, and didn’t accept any kind of help.
‘That made it extremely difficult for opportunities to arise where people would get to see Abiyah or to have any kind of interaction with him.
‘They also frustrated this by whenever they were asked around where he was, whether that be by a professional or by a neighbour, they would act extremely aggressively and be very evasive around where he was.
Knives and USB devices were among the items recovered by police from the caravan
Fruit and vegetables in the fridge and the oven in the caravan are pictured
The Yasharahyalahs lived ‘off grid’ at the site in Glastonbury after leaving Birmingham
One bucket in the caravan was empty but contained the remnants of faeces and sawdust
Pictures released by West Midlands Police show the dirty and cramped conditions
The couple lived ‘off grid’ at the site in Glastonbury after they were evicted from their home
A camera was discovered within the caravan where the couple were residing
An Apple Mac laptop and packaging from fast fashion brand Shein were also found
‘Ultimately moving locations around the country also frustrated that and prevented Abiyah’s death from being noticed.’
Mr Davenport also said of Abiyah’s father: ‘I would describe him as a very arrogant man, a fantasist, and someone who looked to manipulate people.
‘And I would say that Naiyahmi, as his one and only follower, was incredibly weak-minded to put her love of Tai-Zamarai ahead of the needs of her own child and the need to please him ahead of the welfare of Abiyah.’
James Leslie Francis, of the Crown Prosecution Service, said Tai and Naiyahmi Yasharahyalah had deliberately and wilfully neglected Abiyah Yasharahyalah by restricting him to a strict vegan diet and showing a callous disregard for his health and wellbeing.
The District Crown Prosecutor said in a statement: ‘While they were free to behave in a way that damaged their own health, they owed him a duty of care and their actions led to his premature death.
‘Afterwards, they buried his body to hide their crime, without notifying the authorities. If his malnutrition and health issues had been treated, it is highly unlikely that he would have died suddenly and unexpectedly at his age.
‘Working closely with medical professionals and our partners in the criminal justice system, we were able to prove the full extent of their neglect and today, justice has been achieved.’
