An evil foster mother has been jailed for six years for forcibly starving an orphaned boy to skin and bones so she could claim sickness and disablement state handouts which she frittered on luxuries.
Lyubov Korotkova sobbed in an iron cage in a Russian court before she was led away to start her sentence.
The wicked carer was convicted of 'special cruelty, humiliation and torture' in starving and drugging him for eight years and fooling doctors into thinking he had a rare and inexplicable disease.
She falsely claimed around £50,000 in state handouts and for a total of seven years - up to the age of 11 - the boy, named as Valery Kondourov, lived in a 'grave' medical condition.
She must now pay this money back in full and hand over more than £8,000 in 'moral damages' to the child who was removed from her care as soon as her cruelty was exposed.
Before she was exposed, Korotkova - in her 40s - was seen as a local hero in her city Magadan for 'lovingly' caring for an exceptionally ill child.
In fact, she had forcibly reduced his weight by starving him of food and plying him with drugs to feign serious illness.
'The malnutrition was so severe that the 11 year old boy had the weight of a four-year-old child,' said Svetlana Petrenko, of the Russian Federal Investigative Committee.
The child is now recovering his health with a new foster mother - but his life had been in acute danger with Korotkova, say medics.
Russian foster mother jailed for starving boy, 11, who was TWO STONE
Foster mother Lyubov Korotkova, in her 40s sobbed in a Russian court as she was jailed for six years for starving orphaned boy Valery Kondourov. He weighed two stone when he was 11.
www.dailymail.co.uk