Siti Nurhidayah Kamal was jailed three years for blackmail last March for trying to extort money from a couple desperate to retrieve their lost phone containing pictures of their terminally-ill 11-month-old daughter, Amiyah.

Earlier this month, she appealed her sentence, arguing the jail time was excessive and that the original county court judge was wrong to find that her remorse did not detract from the “cruelty” of her actions.

But Australia’s ABC network reported that Chief Justice Anne Ferguson and Justice Stephen McLeish disagreed.

“The sentence was not outside the permissible range,” the broadcaster quoted the justices as saying.

“(Siti Nurhidayah) responded to a public plea for help from two especially vulnerable people in a terrible situation by preying upon them for financial gain.”

They went on to say that Siti Nurhidayah persisted in her demands even after becoming aware that their plight “was at its most grave”.

“It was, as the (county court) judge said, cruel and repellent.”

Siti Nurhidayah messaged parents Jay and Dee Windross after they appealed to the public in 2019 to find their phone containing hundreds of images of their child.

Despite never having the phone, she demanded A$1,000 from the couple even as they told her their daughter was “in her last minutes”.

According to ABC, the court’s decision was welcomed by Jay who is hoping that it will raise more awareness about his daughter’s condition, mitochondrial disease.

He said that the anguish caused by Siti Nurhidayah’s crime still persisted.

“It just brings so many memories back and they’re not really the memories we want to have,” Jay was quoted as saying.