Babysitter, childcare centre operator ordered to pay RM65,000 over Baby Syifaa’s death

The Seremban High Court today ordered a babysitter and a childcare centre operator to pay RM65,000 in damages to the family of a child known as Baby Syifaa who died in their care.

The High Court found the babysitter, Khairunnisa Ahmad Damanhuri, and her sister, Nadzirah, who operates Taska My Mom Child Care Centre at Bandar Seri Sendayan, liable for negligence contributing to the child’s death.

The toddler, whose real name was Nour Rania Asyifaa Yuseri, died on Feb 22, 2022 while under the care of the centre. She was one year old at the time.

Nour Rania’s mother, Anida Idrus, filed a lawsuit against Khairunnisa and Nadzirah in 2025, alleging they were negligent for placing Nour Rania in a cloth cradle and leaving her without supervision.

During the trial, the court heard that Khairunnisa left Nour Rania unattended to perform her prayers and lunch.

Justice Roz Mawar Rozain allowed Anida’s claim against the babysitter and centre owner, ruling that the mother had proven her claims on the balance of probabilities.

She held that Khairunnisa failed to exercise the degree of care reasonably required of a caregiver or babysitter entrusted with an infant.

“A reasonable caregiver would, at the very least, have arranged for another caregiver to assume temporary responsibility or made sufficiently frequent visual checks.

“Neither precaution was taken. The burden of taking either step was slight; the potential consequence of entrapment in the cloth cradle was serious,” Roz Mawar said.

For Nadzirah, the court held that she did not check on Nour Rania during the period Khairunnisa was away, or never asked anyone to do so.

“A childcare centre must be organised so that a caregiver may attend to ordinary personal necessities without leaving infants without an effective means of supervision.

“The absence of anyone available to provide temporary cover disclosed an inadequate system rather than an unavoidable circumstance,” Roz Mawar said.

Earlier this year, in a separate court, Khairunnisa was sentenced to one year in prison and fined RM15,000 for negligence in Nour Rania’s death.

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