Abu Dhabi: Defence lawyers representing Al Worood Academy Private School in the school bus death case plan to tell the court that the kindergarten pupil’s death could not have been prevented even if the appropriate procedure of informing the pupil’s parents that she was missing had been followed.

The five defendants: F.A., the Filipina bus attendant, A.L., the Pakistani bus driver, L.A., the Lebanese receptionist, A.A. the South African school principal and R.A., the Indian owner of the transportation company that provided the school with the buses, have denied the charges.

Suspects one to four are accused of negligence leading to the child’s death.

Advocate and legal consultant Hassan Mattar Al Reyami, who is defending the principal A.A. and the receptionist L.A. in the case, told Gulf News after a recent hearing that “around 1,000 pupils were absent that day. How many hours would it take to call the parents of 1,000 children and tell them that they were not at school?”

The two have been charged with negligence leading to the child’s death.

In October this year, four-year-old Nizaha Aalaa was found sprawled on the floor of her school bus at around 11.45am, hours after she left her Khalidiya area home. The cause of death was found to be heat exhaustion that led to cardiac arrest and suffocation.

F.A. and A.L. are accused of failing to check that there were no pupils in the school bus. A.A. faces charges of failing to cross-check the list of pupils who got on the bus with that of class attendance sheet. A.A. and R.A. are accused of endangering the lives of the pupils travelling on their school buses.

Mohammad Al Dhanhani, head of Family Prosecution, revealed during the trial that the principal had tried to contact the Abu Dhabi Education Council (Adec) requesting that they allow him to raise the school fees to hire a different transportation company.

“This indicates that he recognised that the transportation company he had hired was unsuitable to transport his pupils safely,” Al Dhanhani said.

During a hearing, the medical examiner, who performed an autopsy on the victim, testified in court that he had found bruises on the internal left side of the girl’s head in addition to other marks on her body.

“These indicate that she had frictional contact with a wooden object that could happen as a result of crawling on the floor of the bus. The bruises can be caused by falling or hitting her head on the body of the bus,” he told the court.

Al Reyami asked the medical examiner whether the bruises could have been caused by physical abuse.

“We cannot rule out that possibility, but the injuries found on the girl’s body are a natural result of the situation that she was in. An exact time of death cannot be determined because it all depends on the heat and humidity conditions inside the bus,” the medical examiner said.

The bus driver insisted that his duties did not include checking on pupils inside the bus and that he was only required to lock the bus when the attendant told him it was safe to do so.

Meanwhile, Al Dhanhani stated that the attendant was also working as a cleaner at the school. The receptionist had also previously stated that she was assigned other tasks on the day other than cross-referencing the list of students who got on the bus with those in class.

The principal earlier told prosecutors that the transport company owner told him he had obtained an exception from Adec that allowed him to use his buses for school transport. The bus owner claimed that he had not hired unlicensed attendants.

The bus driver, the school bus and the on-board attendant were not licensed by the Department of Transport and Adec.

The case has been adjourned for the Filipina bus attendant to hire a lawyer.