New Delhi: A 35-year-old woman has been sentenced by a Delhi sessions court to four years in prison in a rare verdict for leaving her newborn baby in a rubbish heap. The baby later died. The sentence was handed down for culpable homicide, as the woman knew the child was only 16 hours old and could not live if left alone.
Additional Sessions Judge Naveen Gupta observed, “It was the duty of the accused to raise the child as a mother even if it was born of an immoral relationship. Instead of fulfilling her duty, she threw it in the rubbish heap like an inanimate object. At the same time, the court cannot ignore the accused's education, income and social status.
According to records the accused widow woman is a mother of five children and is not able to raise one more child. One witness also said he rented a house to a woman who looked pregnant. According to the witness, the woman told him he had a stomach ailment.
On April 6, 2016, the police received a call about an abandoned child. The caller, Noor Hassan, tried to save the child by picking him up from the rubbish heap. Hassan took the child to his home and reported the matter to police. The baby's mother was in critical condition when police arrived and she was bleeding. She was taken to hospital, but the baby could not be rescued.
The woman denied leaving the child in her defense, saying the child was taken away by her father, who handed the child over to Hassan and vowed to name the child and protect him from stigma in society. The woman alleged that Hassan had filed a complaint to save the child's father.
The woman also said that the child's father had thrown her in the rubbish heap. In defense of the woman's statement, her counsel asked why police did not try to locate the child's father and enlist his help in the investigation.
Based on witnesses and evidence, the court noted that the woman had to prove how she lost custody of the child between 6 and 7 a.m. if she gave birth at 5 p.m. "This was the period when Hassan allegedly had a baby and when the information was recorded after the 100 number was called," the judge said.
The verdict said the woman could not present any evidence of her father's presence at the time of the child's birth or that he did not appear to have been called after the child's birth. "Immediately after the child was born, the accused threw it in the rubbish heap and left it there," the verdict said. The baby was picked up by Noor Hassan and taken to hospital, but the baby died the same day. As a result, the woman is convicted and sent to jail under Section 304, Part 2 (culpable homicide) and 317. '
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