Four days after a female baby was found inside a bucket placed in the toilet of the civic-run Sion Hospital, the Sion police managed to arrest the mother of the child who abandoned it to death.
The accused mother is Rizwana Khatun, alias Heena Rafiq Khan, a 23-year-old unmarried woman based in Dharavi.
Background details of case
After the incident came to light on December 8, when a sweeper named Saraswati Dongre found the infant lying inside a dustbin, the 1-day-old baby was immediately admitted to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) of the same hospital. However, she was declared dead immediately after. A case was registered based on Dongre’s statement, and a search for the mother of the infant was initiated by the Sion police.
After going through a series of CCTV cameras, the police finally found a woman behaving suspiciously. She had wrapped the infant in her arms, covering it with a cloth, the police said. They captured her picture and moved it across several informants and nearby police, after which she was traced in the Dharavi area.
Khan charged under section 317
A woman police officer was sent to her location, from where she was arrested. Khan confessed to committing the crime. According to her statement to the police, she was unmarried and had a baby out of a romantic relationship with a man but was not ready for a baby. To hide it from her family members, she left the baby in the washroom after delivering it elsewhere.
Khan has been charged under section 317 (exposure and abandonment of a child under 12 years by a parent or person taking care of the child) of the Indian Penal Code.
