Hassan Moosa Didi who was doing time after being found guilty of sexually assaulting his great granddaughter, has died.

The Maldives Correctional Service revealed on Saturday that Didi, 85, died while serving his 25-year prison sentence at Hulhumalé Jail.

Didi was rushed to Hulhumalé Hospital on Saturday morning after officers found him unresponsive.

Doctors declared him dead at around 9:55am.

The corrections department cited the doctors having confirmed that he died from cardiac arrest.

Didi was bed-ridden and unable to walk at all due to age-related ailments according to corrections, who also confirmed that the family as well as the Inspector of Correctional Service, Maldives Police Service (MPS), Human Rights Commission of the Maldives (HRCM) and the National Integrity Commission (NIC) were informed of the inmate’s death.

The Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO) levied charges on the parents of the toddler from Kanduhulhudhoo island of Gaaf Alif atoll, who fell victim to sexual assault from her own family members back in February 2020.

PGO on Thursday revealed that the parents were charged under the Special Provisions Act to Deal with Child Sex Abuse Offenders, for deliberate failure to report sexual assault against a minor as well as section 414 of the Penal Code which states that a person commits an offense if, being a parent fails to protect the child from an offense stated under section 130 of the Penal Code.

The case of sexual assault against a toddler who was one year and nine months of age then, arose on 15 January 2020 and implicated in the case are the two-year-old’s 33-year-old father, 62-year-old grandfather Ibrahim Didi and 82-year-old great grandfather Hassan Moosa Didi. The father is accused of negligence in the case and the grandfather and great grandfather are accused of sexually assaulting her. The toddler’s mother was in the capital city Malé due to “health issues” when this case emerged.

Posts circulating on social media then, revealed that the child’s maternal aunt had apparently attempted to take the then-two-year-old under care when her mother left, however, the father had refused. Her injuries and wounds were discovered after she told her aunt about pain in her private parts, upon which her aunt took her to the hospital and got her consulted with a doctor.

While sources report that the parents are drug users, police confirmed that they have criminal records.

The child’s father was however, released from police custody on 18 February that year.

Earlier, Hassan Moosa Didi and Ibrahim Didi was charged under the Special Provisions Act to Deal with Child Sex Abuse Offenders, article 15 (b) states that engaging in a sexual act with a child of a person’s family shall be punishable with imprisonment for a period between 20 years and 25 years.

Several such cases of sexual assault against children have been unfolding since then and police, as well as the Ministry of Gender, Family and Social Services have been facing backlash in inadequate measures taken to curb such cases from repeating.