An Irving toddler whose mother is accused of strangling her and her brother this week was laid to rest today after a funeral at a Richardson mosque.

Two-year-old Faryaal Akhter was buried two days after she was taken off life support following Monday’s attack. The family buried her 5-five-year-brother, Zain Akhter, a day earlier.

Their mother, 30-year-old Saiqa Akhter, is being held at the Dallas County Jail on a charge of capital murder. Earlier today, a Dallas County magistrate set her bail at $1 million.

Akhter is accused of killing the children at the family’s Irving apartment. She told a 911 operator that she felt burdened by two autistic children and wanted “normal kids.” She has declined all interview requests.

“She’s obviously scared and she’s from a different culture and doesn’t really understand our system very well,” said Richard Franklin, one of two attorneys appointed by the court to represent Akhter.

Akhter and her husband, Rashid Akhter, emigrated from Pakistan. He works as a computer technician. She was a stay-at-home mother.

Franklin said the attorneys met with Akhter about noon today. She is under observation in the psychiatric unit of the jail but is not under suicide watch. He said they would be requesting a psychiatric evaluation.

“We’re going to wait and see how what plays out,” Franklin said. “There’s a lot of information that doesn’t look good, but by the same token she seems to have mental health issues.”

He noted that in many cases where mothers have killed their children, they were having “some sort of mental stress that lessened their culpability and some of them wound up in mental institutions instead of prison.”

Shortly after 5 p.m. Monday, Saiqa Akhter called Irving 911 from the family’s apartment in the 3300 block of Esters Road, just south of State Highway 183.

In flat tones and halting English, she told the operator that she had strangled her two small children because they had autism and she wanted “normal kids.”

She told the operator that she felt nothing after killing her children. She said she initially tried to kill them with bathroom cleaner, but they refused to drink it so she grabbed a wire and strangled them.

Officers who responded to the scene found both children lying on a bed in the family’s second-floor apartment along with an antenna wire that police believe was used to kill them.

An uncle has said that Saiqa had been depressed since moving into a new apartment in recent weeks. He said that Zain had autism, but he did not indicate whether Faryaal suffered from it, too.

Wasimul Haque, the uncle, said Tuesday that Zain had severe speech difficulties but had been improving. He said the boy had been in speech therapy. Faryaal also had health problems and was rushed to an emergency room with a respiratory issue in May 2009.

The family was the subject of a Child Protective Services investigation for leaving Zain home alone during that hospital visit last year. An agency spokeswoman said there were no signs of physical abuse, and CPS worked with the family to get them help.