Legal challenge over fire deaths

Southall Black Sisters campaigns for Asian women

A women's group is going to the High Court to seek the right to intervene legally in the way in which coroners' courts deal with controversial cases.

Southall Black Sisters - which champions rights for Asian women - wants to challenge a decision by the West Yorkshire Coroner not to resume an inquest into the death of a mother and child.

The bodies of Nazia Bi and her two-year-old daughter, Sana Majid Ali, were found after a house fire in Bradford three years ago.

Nazia's husband Chowdray Majid Ali was charged with their murders but the charges were dropped.

But Sheffield Crown Court was told she had phoned the emergency services moments before her death, claiming her husband had burned her.

'Interested party'

Campaigners for the Southall Black Sisters say the coroner began an inquest before the court hearing, but refused to resume it afterward, as not being in the public interest.

He turned down the group's request for a full hearing, saying the organisation was not an "interested party" and could not ask for the hearing to be resumed.

The women's group says the coroner should have heard the case on a matter of public interest.

If it is successful the ruling could set a legal precedent.

It would clarify what an interested third party is, and whether it can intervene and challenge decisions made by a coroner on matters of public interest.