Mother smiles after being jailed for burning son alive for revealing her affair to his step-father

A woman who murdered her young son by setting him on fire earlier this year has been jailed in Russia for 15 years.

Anastasia Baulina, a cashier from the Kursk region near the border with Ukraine, doused her eight-year-old son Andrey with petrol and then threw a lit match on him because he told his step-father that she had cheated on him. Before the sentencing, the 32-year-old tried to convince the court that she only meant to punish Andrey and had immediately used snow to douse the flames, reports Mail Online.

In a reenactment of the incident that was filmed by police, the convict demonstrated on a plastic dummy how she poured petrol over Andrey's head, and lit three matches which blew out until the fourth one which she threw at his jumper. She added that her son then ran to the garden screaming and fell down on his hands and knees, after which she covered him with snow, noting that he helped her put the fire out on his sweater though his hands were burning.

However, the victim's sister who was an eyewitness to the crime recounted a different story. Natalya, 12, told the judges that their mother had made her watch while she was pouting fuel over her brother, who repeatedly begged her "please, don't" before she lit the match. Baulina then told her daughter "let's go watch how the scarecrow burns."

Natalya added that the culprit never tried to put the flames out on Andrey, and it was actually their step-father, Pavel Baulina, who came running from inside the house after hearing the boy's screams and extinguished the fire. Meanwhile, as Pavel was trying to save Andrey, Baulina screamed at the burning boy, "I will teach you to keep your mouth shut."

Andrey was rushed to the hospital in critical condition, but succumbed to his injuries the next day while he was being taken by ambulance to a specialist burn unit.

The court was told that Baulina had previously also assaulted her son by holding his hand over a gas cooker flame for taking food from the fridge. She denied adultery, but texts on her phone proved that she was being unfaithful to her husband Pavel, the victim's stepfather. Pavel chose not to testify at the hearing.

Baulina was captured on video smiling even after she was sentenced to prison, as she told a local newspaper, "I'm not guilty of premeditated murder, for sure...Yes, I wanted to scare my child, but I did not wish him dead. So it was destined by God for him and me."

Her daughter is now being raised by a foster family.