STARVED to just three stone and covered with horror bite marks and burns, little Ayesha Ali scribbled “I tried to be good” on a scrap of paper.
As other children her age played in the sunshine during the summer holidays, the eight-year-old was locked away and tortured.
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Her mum Polly Chowdhury had been “bewitched” by neighbour Kiki Muddar, who convinced her lover that Ayesha was evil.
Using a fantasy world of self-serving alter egos, Muddar convinced Chowdhury to boot her husband out and let her move in.
Once her foot was in the door of the family home in Chadwell Heath, East London, the monster’s sole purpose became making Ayesha’s life a “living hell”.
In the months leading up to her death, the youngster was subjected to a “life of cruelty and misery that defies belief”.
Muddar and Chowdhury would torture the little girl in the dead of night while wearing “vile masks” in a punishment straight from a horror film.
She was heard screaming, sobbing and pleading with her mum: “Amah, I don’t want to be bad, Amah, Amah, I don’t want to be bad.”
The evil pair also made her write a list of things she had done wrong, which included “huffing and puffing”, “telling lies” and “being rude”.
Their despicable actions grew more violent when Muddar convinced her partner that Ayesha had “bad blood” and needed to be punished.
The youngster was made to stand in cold baths, beaten, bitten and force fed until she was sick.
Muddar encouraged the horror in chilling messages, telling her lover: “You have no right to ever love or like your evil daughter.”
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She was also recorded in a chilling call describing how she was going to “f***ing kill” the little girl, who she branded a “witch”.
Muddar kept her sinister promise on August 29, 2013, when Ayesha was found dead at home with 56 different injuries – including bruising all over her body and a carpet burn.
Sickeningly, the youngster even had a bite mark from her mum on tiny, three stone frame after Chowdhury and Muddar became obsessed with vampires.
But Chowdhury wasn’t always the vile monster she became and was even described as the “perfect mother” before the horror.
The disturbing chain of events unfolded in 2007 when Muddar moved in next door to the family.
The mum became embroiled in a fantasy world as Muddar used chilling alter egos to seduce Chowdhury.
She pretended to be a Muslim spirit called Skyman and Jimmy – a paranormal lover – to send more than 40,000 messages to her neighbour.
The mum became convinced Muddar was a conduit for Jimmy and that sex with her would be like the Hollywood hit film Ghost.
Muddar also made Chowdhury believe her husband, Ayesha’s dad Asfar Ali, was cheating and that he should be kicked out.
Once she moved in, the couple’s relationship developed around a “sad-masochistic” fantasy world.
The alter-egos Muddar had created began to get inside Chowdhury’s head – telling her that Ayesha should be punished and that she was evil.
One text from “Skyman” read: “Your daughter can have the pain.”
In the days leading up to the killing, Muddar and Chowdhury repeatedly beat the schoolgirl.
On the night before she died, Ayesha was battered with a shower head then smothered in a grisly bid to “put her out of her misery”.
I watched as killer’s gruesome plan was uncovered in court – there were no tears or any remorse
By Holly Christodoulou, Digital Court Editor
I HAD only been a reporter for just over a year when I was sent to Chadwell Heath to cover Ayesha’s killing.
All the media had been told at that point was that the body of a young girl was discovered inside a home and a 34-year-old woman had been arrested.
Neighbours confirmed the suspect as Polly Chowdhury but also revealed a second woman had been taken away by police.
But who this woman was remained a mystery until – after hours of digging – I found out she was called Kiki Muddar and had moved in around four months before the tragedy.
Of course at this stage I was not aware how she was connected to the horror that had been discovered inside that house.
That gruesome revelation came almost two years later as the evil pair sat separated by a security guard in the dock at the Old Bailey.
Crammed in the tiny press seats among fellow journalists, we all sat shocked as the true horror began to emerge.
We learnt that after trawling through 40,000 messages, 140,000 lines of text, 1,450 voice recordings and 17,000 pages of Facebook messages, police discovered how Muddar had seduced Chowdhury.
Using a string of self-serving aliases, not only did she persuade the mum to end her marriage and let Muddar move in, she also convinced her Ayesha was “evil”.
This sinister motive led the mum to turn a blind eye as she was brutally abused by her lover – even sometimes joining in on the warped punishments Muddar dished out.
Tragically, we were not the only ones to discover what happened to Ayesha for the first time in court.
The youngster’s dad Asfar Ali had been a witness during the case, which meant he hadn’t been told in advance about his daughter’s final moments.
Faced with a “lifetime of grief”, he wept for his “beautiful” daughter from the public gallery.
Chowdhury also broke down as she admitted she had been sucked into a web of deceit.
But cowardly Muddar refused to give evidence and never shed one tear.
She also showed no remorse and remained emotionless as the verdict was handed down in a sign of how truly “wicked” she was.
Chillingly, she popped out after killing the young girl to buy a replacement head.
Muddar later called 999 to report Chowdhury had tried to kill herself in the bath and that Ayesha was dead.
When paramedics found her naked and battered on the floor of her bedroom, they established she had been killed some time ago.
Muddar and Chowdhury both sought to blame each other for the horror but were convicted of manslaughter.
The pair, who were cleared of murder, were both jailed for a total of 31 years in March 2015.
Chowdhury later told how she became convinced hurting Ayesha would “stop the gates of hell from opening”.
But tragically that had already happened when she invited evil Muddar into her bed.
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