A mother repeatedly stabbed her three-year-old daughter before dousing her body in acid in a bid to "dissolve her away", a court has heard.
The body of Alia Ahmed Jama was found by police at the home she shared with her mother Iman Omar Yousef, 25, in Erdington, Birmingham, in February.
Yousef, a paranoid schizophrenic, was initially charged with her murder but at Birmingham Crown Court, judge Mr Justice Flaux ruled that she was unfit to plead to the charge and jurors were instructed to consider whether she was guilty of unlawfully killing her daughter.
James Burbidge QC, prosecuting, told the court: "You are going to hear about a sad and tragic case because it concerns the death of a three-year-old girl.
"In this unusual set of circumstances all you have to determine is whether the prosecution has made you sure that Iman Omar Yousef unlawfully killed her three-year-old daughter."
The prosecutor told the jury that two officers from West Midlands Police attended the address in Milverton Road on February 13 after concerns for Alia's wellbeing were raised by Yousef's mother.
He said: "She was on the floor and not on the bed, however her body was in a state of decomposition in that the skin had melted away exposing bone, due to some form of corrosive substance having been applied to her torso."
The prosecutor told the court that a number of stab wounds had been inflicted, most likely with a large kitchen knife, though no weapon was recovered from the scene.
Dr James Lucas, a pathologist who carried out a post-mortem examination on Alia's body, told the court "very extensive corrosive damage" had hampered interpretation of her injuries, making it impossible for him to ascertain a cause of death.
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He told the jury that the front of the child's body, specifically her shoulders, chest and upper abdomen, displayed evidence of "dozens of penetrating injuries of varying shapes and sizes".
