- Mother tried to kill herself and pleads guilty to manslaughter
- She 'had voices in her head' telling her to 'end it now'
- Psychiatrists conclude 45-year-old mentally unstable
- Serious social services case review expected
A mother was today jailed for killing her autistic 12-year-old with bleach - after social services allegedly failed to address her mental health problems.
Satpal Kaur Singh, 45, struggled to cope looking after son Ajit and feared he would be taken away, the Old Bailey heard.
Her 'obvious' mental health problems were recognised yet she was 'allowed to resist help', the court was told.
Mrs Singh was found guilty of killing her son by forcing him to drink bleach and her case was heard at the Old Bailey
David Hislop QC, defending, said: 'Neighbours knew, school teachers knew, social services knew, but the tragedy for Ajit was that nothing was done.'
Singh made her son drink a cup of Domestos in February last year, just hours after she refused to co-operate with council staff at a meeting over his care.
She also drank some herself and in a suicide note said she had done it after being 'scrutinised and hounded by social services'.
Singh, of Barking, east London, was jailed for seven years today after she pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility at an earlier hearing.
Judge Peter Beaumont, the Recorder of London, told her: 'I recognise how difficult Ajit was to care for.
'Your deteriorating mental health robbed you of proper insight into what was going wrong and erected real obstacles between you and people and the agencies that were trying so hard to help you.'
Barking and Dagenham council said a serious case review was expected to be completed in the next few weeks.
The court heard that, during a meeting with social services on the day she killed her son, Singh had appeared 'calm' and no-one who attended had any concerns about her behaviour.
But hours later she rang 999 to say: 'I've just murdered my son and I've tried to kill myself.'
Police arrived to find the boy lying on his back on the living room sofa, not breathing, and an 'almost overpowering' smell of bleach in the air.
Singh later told detectives that voices in her head had been telling her: 'You have to do it. Go for it, it's come to an end now.'
The judge told her: 'You faced the prospect of Ajit being taken away from you, but you killed him. You were, in my judgment, making a statement, without any consideration of his interests.'
Psychiatrists agreed that the defendant, who is originally from Manchester, had been suffering from a mental disorder.
Mr Hislop said: 'This was a woman who loved her son too much. The belief she held, because of her mental disorder, was that hers was an act of mercy.'
He said the boy's life, plagued by health problems, had been made bearable by the 'love and devotion' she had shown him.
Mr Hislop added: 'One of the tragedies of this case is that the deterioration of her mental health was recognised by so many, yet she was allowed to resist the help of those who should have known better - ignoring the fact that her very resistance was symptomatic of her obvious decline in mental health and her not having any insight into that deterioration.
'Social services and other agencies were aware of her mental health difficulties and the deterioration of them and they were also aware that she was under considerable stress and clearly not coping.'
Mr Hislop quoted a social services note from April 2009 which described a 'possible mental health breakdown' and said: 'She does not seek counselling to help her deal with her stress levels.'
In October 2009, Singh complained to a social worker that a disability manager had previously referred to her as 'another Victoria Climbie'.
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