Accompanied by a crescendo of firecrackers, the People's Court in Shijiazhuang, Hebei province, is expected to pass down "guilty" verdicts on the chief suspects in the tainted milk scandal before the end of this week.

Among them is Tian Wenhua, 66, the former chairwoman and general manager of the Sanlu Group. Tian is likely to spend the rest of her twilight years behind bars for the production and sale of milk powder heavily tainted with melamine - a banned additive supposed to thicken raw milk and increase its protein count.

Worse, she failed to stop production even after she came to know that infants had died and countless others were suffering from kidney stones after drinking her firm's milk powder.