Woman dumps stillborn baby in dustbin, arrested

The officers reached the hospital and conducted the panchnama before handing the body to the hospital authorities for postmortem. The police then registered a case against an unknown person for allegedly disposing of the body

MUMBAI: A 32-year-old woman was arrested by the Virar police on Tuesday for allegedly discarding the body of her stillborn child in a dustbin outside the Sanjeevai Hospital in Virar two days ago.

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On Sunday morning, while clearing medical waste bins outside Sanjeevani Hospital, the municipal garbage collectors found the body of a male newborn baby wrapped in a white cloth and informed the police about the body.

The officers reached the hospital and conducted the panchnama before handing the body to the hospital authorities for postmortem. The police then registered a case against an unknown person for allegedly disposing of the body.

The police scanned through the CCTV recordings of the vicinity to identify the accused. “We scanned through the CCTV recordings and found a woman getting off an autorickshaw and throwing the bundle of white cloth in the dustbin. However, her face was covered, and we could not identify the woman directly,” said the police officer.

The police traced the auto and questioned the driver about the passenger he had left at the hospital. “The driver directed us to the Virar west chawl, where he had picked up the passenger from,” said the officer.

On Tuesday morning, a team of police officers went to the area and found that a woman from the locality was pregnant. The police identified the woman as Soni Nagendra Jha, who has five kids.

On detaining the woman, she told the police that she fell from the first floor of her chawl a month ago when she was eight months pregnant. Two days ago, she experienced extreme pain and delivered a stillborn baby in her house. “She said that she was scared and disposed of the body in the dustbin,” the officer said.