A woman, who set fire to her bed ‘because a devil in her head told her to do it’, has lost her appeal at the Supreme Criminal Appeals Court.
The High Criminal Court sentenced her to three years in prison in May for starting a fire in a property and endangering the lives of others, which led the Civil Defence to evacuate the apartment building in Juffair.
The court heard that the 27-year-old Pakistani woman used a lighter and a piece of clothing to start the fire, poured oil in the flat ‘to increase the extent of the blaze’, and then left the building.
A Bahraini security guard previously testified that he saw smoke ‘spilling out’ of the flat, and called emergency services.
The appellant, who does not have a work visa, was also ordered to pay back BD2,400 to the company operating the flats for the damage she had caused, though no injuries were reported.
Judges ruled that she should be deported after completion of her sentence.
Although her lawyer claimed that she was ‘high on meth’ at the time of the January incident, the appeals court upheld all of the penalties.
According to her attorney, the appellant was hearing voices in her head, telling her that the bed was possessed by a demon, and that she needed to vanquish it with fire.
“She did not mean to vandalise or destroy – she was acting on a delusion that overcame her, and she thought she was getting rid of the thing that was harming her,” the lawyer said in a defence memo.
“She imagines that there is an entity telling her to do certain things that make her behave in strange and deviant ways. That is proof that she has a psychological condition that took away her sense of reason.
“The appellant has a history of using methamphetamine, which causes hallucinations and psychosis, and that puts the user in a state of utter delusion,” he stated, referencing her criminal record, in which she was previously accused of consuming drugs.
“Her actions were to fight an imagined devil in her bed, and she did not commit them with the intention of damaging the building and disturbing her neighbours.”
The attorney asked for a new psychological evaluation to be conducted but the request was not granted.
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