Nandini Jha faces second-degree murder charge in connection with the death of her 3-year-old daughter Niyati Jha, who suffered head trauma.
MISSISSAUGA -The Identity of Indo-Canadian woman who beat her three-year-old daughter to death was revealed this week.
Nandini Jha faces second-degree murder charge in connection with the death of her 3-year-old daughter Niyati Jha, who suffered head trauma.
In lifting the publication ban, a Superior Court judge urged the province to implement a system for notifying media when publication bans are being requested, after the Toronto Star and other news outlets successfully challenged a ban in the case of a woman on trial for the death of her daughter, reported Toronto Star newspaper.
“The sooner the better,” wrote Justice Deena Baltman in her decision Wednesday lifting the ban on the names of Nandini Jha, 37, and her 3-year-old daughter, Niyati, who she is alleged to have beaten to death in 2011.
Nandini has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder. Baltman imposed the publication ban at the request of the Crown and defence on Jan. 12 to protect the identities of Niyati’s three surviving siblings, despite the fact that the case had been widely reported on in 2012 when Nandini was arrested.
The media, who were never seeking to identify the siblings, were not notified prior to Baltman’s Jan. 12 order, as is typically required by rules set out by the Supreme Court of Canada.
“When someone seeks to restrict the public’s constitutional right to know what is going on in courts (with a publication ban), the public, through the media, should be notified and given the opportunity to stand up and say ‘No, this is not justified,’” said Daniel Stern, counsel for the Star and other media.
In making her decision to modify the ban, Baltman relied on another decision from the Brampton courthouse by Justice John Sproat, who lifted a ban at the Star’s request on the names of Sean and Maria Hosannah, convicted of manslaughter last year in the death of their 2-year-old daughter, Matinah.
Baltman wrote that she agrees and adopts a key part of Sproat’s Jan. 23 ruling, which reads:
“The routine granting of publication bans on the identity of adult accused persons and offenders would be a radical change in the law. If a publication ban is necessary in this case, it would be necessary in any case in which a heinous crime was committed by a person with children and an uncommon surname.”
She also quoted from a decision by Toronto Justice Ian Nordheimer, who found that a publication ban “has to be necessary, not simply preferable or safer.” She wrote that those intimately connected with the Jha family likely already know about the trial, and therefore a ban “at this stage would have limited benefit.”
During her short life, Niyati Jha suffered several injuries that included head fractures, rib and spinal injuries and bruises to her neck, face, forearm and thighs, the trial has heard.
On the day she died in September 2011, she sustained significant brain damage, bruising, swelling and bleeding, Crown prosecutor Jill Prenger told jurors last week. She suggested that the accused will claim that some of the injuries to her daughter were caused when a bookcase fell on her.
In Ontario, media are sometimes notified by the Ministry of the Attorney General of upcoming publication ban hearings, and sometimes not. “In cases where a judge directs the Crown to provide notice to the media, the Crown, often with the assistance of the Ministry’s Communications Branch, will comply with the court order and contact local or provincial media outlets as required,” said ministry spokesman Brendan Crawley.
The judge’s ruling indicates she was unaware that the media had not been contacted about her Jan. 12 order, and expressed concerns “about the breadth of the existing order” once the trial began the week of Feb. 9. Baltman wrote that the Crown and defence refused to agree to a narrowing of the ban, and she “therefore repeated that it would be necessary to alert the media.” The Ministry of the Attorney General then contacted the media on Feb. 12, and a hearing was held on Tuesday.
Baltman wrote that the federal prosecution service and several provinces, including British Columbia, Alberta and Nova Scotia, already have systems and guidelines in place to notify the media every time a publication ban is being requested.
“However, Ontario has yet to issue such a guideline, despite exhortations to that effect from the Canadian Bar Association and a 2006 Report to the Attorney General,” Baltman wrote. “It strikes me as odd that the notification process appears to proceed smoothly in federal prosecutions, but not in the provincial domain.”
Toronto media lawyer Iain MacKinnon said the Canadian Media Lawyers’ Association is currently working with Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice to have such a system in place, which could be implemented as early as this spring. He said the idea is that once the Superior Court is on board, the Ontario Court of Justice will follow.
“Right now Ontario is lagging behind other provinces,” he said. “Crown or defence lawyers can ask for a publication ban, and often they are just granted on the spot by the judge. And so for the public to know what’s going on in our criminal justice system, we need an effective way for the media to make arguments against these bans.”
Courtesy Toronto Star
