Mumbai: Three women were arrested by the Sahar police on Sunday for allegedly killing a seven-day-old baby girl and throwing her in the Mithi river on October 3.
The body of the baby was detected by the police on Saturday morning in the river near Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport in Andheri.
“The control room had received a call regarding the body. We went to the spot and retrieved it with the help of the fire brigade,” said senior Police Inspector (PI) R Patil of Sahar police station. The body was wrapped in a polythene bag and had a handkerchief tied around its neck. In the bag was a medical bill from Sion hospital that helped unravel the mystery.
A police team later obtained from the Sion hospital record of all women who had recently delivered a baby, especially those residing in the Western suburbs. “We secured the address of a woman and went to her place and interrogated her. It turned out that three women of the same family were present at the hospital until October 3,” Patil said.
Among the three women, Bhagyashree Mandavkar, 22, was the mother of the child. At first the women feigned ignorance, but when the cops confronted them with their findings, they admitted to having been involved in the incident. According to Patil, Bhagyashree had an affair with a boy and her parents did not approve of it. After it was revealed that Bhagyashree was pregnant, her mother and sister, Suchita and Archana Mandavkar, allegedly decided to kill the baby.
“Bhagyashree was (allegedly) aware of their plans. On October 3, when she got a discharge from the hospital, the three women left in an autorickshaw. They dropped Bhagyashree at their residence in Sakinaka and left in the autorickshaw along with the baby. After getting down somewhere on the way, they went a little ahead, choked the baby by tying the handkerchief around its neck, wrapped the body in the polythene bag and threw it in the river,” said Patil. The father of the baby did not know anything about this. The police are yet to identify him.
The case was unravelled within 10 hours and the three women have been arrested and placed in police custody. They have been charged with murder and under other relevant sections of the IPC.
