For two years the body of three-year-old Abiyah Yasharahyalah lay underground in the back garden of a terraced house in Birmingham.
The little boy was buried by his parents, who believed he would be reincarnated if they followed a ritual while interring the body. Tai and Naiyahmi Yasharahyalah would later claim that in performing the ceremony, they were trying to preserve their son’s soul.
Abiyah died in 2020 following a respiratory infection. This was not the full extent of his poor health. He was in a severely malnourished state and suffered with a list of other problems. Only when his body was exhumed by police in 2022 did the scale of his parents’ neglect emerge.
The couple lived off grid and created their own belief system based on a mixture of elements that drew from New Age mysticism and West African religion. They practised strict veganism and, as they had done with wider society, turned their back on Western medicine.
The lifestyle saw Tai Yasharahyalah style himself as the head of a fictional country for which the couple made their own passports.
But at a criminal trial, a jury heard they prioritised extreme values over Abiyah’s welfare, with disastrous consequences.
One detective told the BBC the couple had “spiralled downwards” into a belief system that drove them “into the ground”.
Tests on the body showed Abiyah was suffering from a catalogue of conditions including rickets, anaemia, stunted growth, bone malformation and deformity, bone fractures and severe dental decay.
While no cause of death was formally established, experts in court said starvation was probably to blame.
The couple denied causing or allowing Abiyah’s death, and also child cruelty by failing to provide adequate nourishment or summon medical care. They were convicted after a seven-week trial at Coventry Crown Court.
Neighbours and relatives had repeatedly raised concerns about Abiyah but his parents became aggressive when challenged.
On the front door of their home in Handsworth was a large sign that read “no trespassing, access denied to all government bodies”.
The couple claimed to have renounced their citizenship and did not consider themselves to be “contracted” to the state – in other words, they had withdrawn from society.
Tai Yasharahyalah, a former medical genetics student before quitting the field, invented his own laws and claimed to have established his own kingdom. The couple styled themselves as “sovereign and indigenous members of the Kingdom of Yasharahyalah”.
The cult had no other followers. It was just husband and wife; the latter of whom, according to police, was a devotee of her partner’s ideology.
The pair, though, were at times not shy to share their views, letting police know a cornerstone of their philosophy.
When officers visited in 2021 to carry out a welfare check on Abiyah, 42-year-old Tai Yasharahyalah yelled out: “You have no jurisdiction in my realm… I don’t have to engage with you because I am in my sovereign capacity.”
As he spoke, Abiyah was already dead and the police left without finding his makeshift grave.
