An Indian-origin mother, who beat her 7-year-old son to death "like a dog" for failing to memorise the Quran, was on Monday sentenced to life for killing him and setting his body afire to hide evidence after applying barbeque gel.

A sobbing Sara Ege, 33, collapsed and had to be helped from the dock after being told that she would serve 17 years before she could be considered for parole.

Cardiff crown court heard that Sara, a mathematics graduate from India, treated her son Yaseen "like a dog" when he struggled to memorise passages of the holy book of Islam.

She beat him on the hands and his body until he collapsed on the floor of his bedroom and died in July 2010, the Guardian reported.

She was also found guilty of perverting the course of justice and given a four-year sentence for that crime, the BBC reported.

Her husband Yousuf Ege, a taxi driver, was cleared of allowing the death of a child by failing to protect him.

Sara had pleaded not guilty to murder and claimed her husband was responsible for Yaseen's death.

While sentencing her, Justice Wyn Williams said: "I am satisfied that it was his failure to learn the Koran that day that resulted in the beating that caused his death".

"On the day of Yaseen's death you had kept him home from school so he could devote himself to his study of the Koran.

"He was memorising passages but on that day Yaseen must have failed in some way and it was that which was a trigger for the beating.

"You killed your own son. At the time of the killing he was particularly vulnerable because of his age and because of his relative physical frailty.

"In killing your son you abused a precious relationship of trust which does and should exist between a parent and a child," the judge said.

"This prolonged cruelty culminated on the day of his death in what was a savage attack. You then set fire to his body in an attempt to evade responsibility for what you had done".

It was initially thought Yaseen had died in a fire, but tests later revealed he had died hours earlier.