An expat woman has been sentenced to one year in prison for unintentionally causing a blaze in an Amwaj apartment, resulting in the death of her roommate.
The tragedy took place on May 30, when the 23-year-old Indian defendant lit a candle to pray before her home shrine and left it burning.
In her final moments, the victim called her flatmates begging for help, and was eventually rescued by the Civil Defence, but died in hospital. An autopsy revealed that she died of smoke inhalation.
During a hearing held on July 18, the defendant told judges that she had a shrine in her room, described as a wooden table with the incense stick on it, as well as a heap of rice flour.
She said that the candle remained lit all day and that she did not put it out. She and her roommates performed rituals from Hinduism, and she sent a photo of the shrine to her mother as a habit.
After she lit it, the defendant went to the living room and sat with her roommates, when the victim called for help.
The bedroom housing the shrine was on fire and the victim was stuck in the bathroom as the roommates heard her scream: “Fire, fire!”
The women tried to rescue her, but it was impossible to reach her because of the fire and thick smoke.
Meanwhile, the building’s security guard recounted hearing the fire alarm, and rushed to the fifth floor to see three women standing outside a burning flat.
They told him that there was a woman inside the apartment, so he called emergency services, which put out the fire and took the victim to safety.
Medics tried to save the victim, but it was too late. The coroner concluded that the victim died of carbon monoxide poisoning, and observed evidence of smoke and fire on the corpse.
The doctor also ruled out assault as the cause of death, observing that there were no signs of physical violence or recent injuries.
Meanwhile, the defendant testified that she had come to Bahrain in late February, less than five weeks before the incident took place.
The trial was adjourned to July 25 for defence arguments, where the lawyer representing the defendant claimed that the fire was not her fault.
During the hearing, the attorney made an unsupported claim that the fire victim died due to a medical error by emergency doctors, who he accused of misdiagnosing her condition.
In his verbal argument before judges, he also claimed that the fire may not have been started by a candle lit by the defendant, but rather by a faulty electrical outlet close by.
The lawyer argued that the amount of CO inhaled by the victim was 36.4 per cent, which isn’t sufficient to cause immediate death, but requires urgent medical attention.
The victim was alive for about an hour and a half after being transported to the hospital, and the lawyer argued that had she received the correct treatment, she would still be alive.
He also argued that the candle is made from flour and rice, both flame-retardant materials, and even if all the wax melted, it would be impossible for the base to catch fire.
The lawyer went on to blame the building management for not following safety regulations, stating that the bathroom the victim was stuck in had no windows or ventilation, with a door that reportedly could not be opened from the outside.
He added that the defendant was neither aware of the safety precautions and emergency procedures, nor did she know how to stop the fire.
The case was then adjourned to yesterday and the judges sentenced the defendant to one year in prison.
nader@gdnmedia.bh
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