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PETALING JAYA: A Malaysian woman who tried to blackmail the parents of a dying baby in Melbourne for AU $ 1,000 will remain in prison after the Victoria Court of Appeal denied her early release appeal.
Siti Nurhidayah Kamal was jailed for three years for blackmail last March for trying to extort money from a desperate couple to recover her lost phone that contains photos of their terminally ill 11-month-old daughter, Amiyah.
Earlier this month, he appealed his sentence, arguing that the jail time was excessive and that the original county court judge was wrong to find that his remorse did not detract from the “cruelty” of his actions.
But Australia’s ABC network reported that Chief Justice Anne Ferguson and Justice Stephen McLeish disagreed.
“The sentence was not outside the permissible range,” said the announcer, citing the judges.
“(Siti Nurhidayah) responded to a public request for help from two especially vulnerable people in dire situations, taking advantage of them for financial gain.”
They went on to say that Siti Nurhidayah persisted in her demands even after realizing that her plight “was more serious.”
“It was, as the judge (of the county court) said, cruel and disgusting.”
Siti Nurhidayah messaged parents Jay and Dee Windross after they appealed to the public in 2019 to find her phone with hundreds of pictures of their son.
Despite never having the phone, she demanded A $ 1,000 from the couple even when they told her their daughter was “in her last minutes.”
According to ABC, the court’s decision was welcomed by Jay, who hopes it will raise awareness about his daughter’s condition, mitochondrial disease.
He said the anguish caused by the Siti Nurhidayah crime still persisted.
“It just brings up so many memories and it’s not really the memories that we want to have,” Jay was quoted as saying.
