The three-day-old infant was found buried in a pit
Police have arrested a 28-year-old woman in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, for allegedly killing her newborn.
The woman was identified as Viji, a resident of the village of Panavoor. She was arrested after neighbours noticed drops of blood near her house.
The woman, who is estranged from her husband, is being investigated for murdering the baby which had been delivered on November 30, 2020.
Viji reportedly had an affair with another man who is believed to be the father of the murdered love child.
The neighbours became suspicious after they noticed that Viji had a flat stomach though the baby she had been carrying was nowhere to be found.
This prompted them to search the premises of Viji’s house when they came across blood drops nearby.
A detailed search followed and they found the baby buried at the back of the house.
The three-day-old infant was found buried in a pit, near a well in the compound.
It was reported that the woman gave birth after consuming homemade herbal concoctions.
In a bid to hide the birth, she allegedly smothered the baby to death.
Prior to her arrest, the woman worked at a textile showroom and was living in the house with her father and brother.
The shame and accompanying scrutiny around having a baby outside marriage have led to similar crimes in the past.
In August 2019, a woman was accused of killing her newborn in Kattappana of Idukki, Kerala.
The unmarried woman, who worked at a bank, gave birth at a private hostel.
None of her family members, colleagues or hostel mates knew about the pregnancy. Her elder sister, who shared a room with her in the hostel, did not know of it either.
When the woman went into labour, she asked her sister to get some medicines from outside.
By the time the sister returned, she had delivered the baby.
Though she claimed that it was a stillborn child, the postmortem report revealed that the baby had been killed after it was born.
Kerala has witnessed many crimes involving children in the recent past.
In the same month as the Kattappana case, a one-month-old baby’s partially decomposed body was retrieved from Vembanad lake in Vaikom.
In September 2020, a one-month-old baby died after her father threw her into a river.
Unnikrishnan, aged 25, committed the crime following a row with his wife.
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