Mother held for killing her baby girl

HYDERABAD: The Ramchandrapuram police on Monday arrested a 22-year-old woman Sreedevi for drowning her 49-day-old baby girl Keertana in a water tub at her father’s residence on March 20.
The police said the woman in her confessional statement stated that since she and her husband Joshi Krishna Sharma, 24, could not get a job and were becoming a burden on her parents, she decided to kill her second child Keertana.
The husband was away in Sadashivpet, his native village, with his elder daughter who is 18-months old at the time of the incident.
The housewife confessed that she took the extreme step unable to overcome poverty. She told police she had worked as a receptionist before she became pregnant, but could get any kind of employment. As her husband, a priest, too could not secure a job at his native place, they were forced to shift to her father’s house in MIG colony of BHEL township.
The police said that the couple used to stay in a separate room in the house and the girl’s father too was a Brahmin pandit who used to eke out his living by performing rituals. Since the parents were reportedly taking care of the expenses incurred on the elder daughter, Sreedevi killed her baby to avoid humiliation, the police said.
Ramchandrapuram inspector M Srinivasa Rao said that they had doubted the mother’s statement on the day of the incident itself, but did not question her as she was in a state of shock. The woman soon went into depression and was admitted to the hospital.
She confided the truth to elders in the family, who in turn alerted the police.
“We found discrepancies in the mother’s statement. Our enquiries found that the mother was very attached to the baby and never left her alone. But on the day of the incident, she told the police that she went out of the house for five minutes to visit a neighbour. She gave many conflicting versions. She finally broke down at the hospital and said she in fact held the baby by her feet and dropped her into the water tub. She also put a lid to ensure that the baby drowned,� the inspector said.
The woman was sent to judicial remand on Monday.