Dead Newborn's Body Abandoned At Police Station, Chewed By Rats

In a horrific incident in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, a newborn baby was found dead in the compound of a police station in Bangalore, the state's capital. According to local media, the child was found by a sweeper who was cleaning the compound.

Officers of the Jalahalli traffic police station in the northern part of Bangalore said the offenders likely tossed the body of the baby girl over a four-foot-high compound wall and escaped the scene the night of March 24. The body was discovered the next day, but by then, rats had eaten parts of it. Other details about the incident remained unclear.

"Rats had nibbled away at the baby's legs. We performed her last rites in Jalahalli burial ground after postmortem," a police officer told the Times of India. "We are not sure why they threw the baby inside the police station compound. Efforts are on to trace the culprits."

In parts of India, the birth of a girl child is not as welcome as that of a male child, and some parents abandon female babies after birth. In some cases, parents also kill the girl child. Determination of the gender of the fetus is illegal in India. However, some people illegally learn the gender of the child and sometimes choose to kill the unborn baby if it is a girl.

In a similar incident, the body of a newborn girl was found Feb. 14, abandoned inside an empty well in Gurugram, a city southwest of New Delhi in northern India. Authorities retrieved the body of the infant from the well. They said her body was dumped inside a plastic bag. Police launched an investigation into the incident.

In another terrible incident that took place last week in the north-eastern Brazilian state of Ceara, animals were seen digging up and eating a newborn baby who had been buried alive by her mother. Neighbors witnessed the incident after they heard the cries of the baby and went searching for it. The 24-year-old mother was later arrested by local police for burying her newborn daughter. During questioning, the mother allegedly said she thought the baby had died after she gave birth to the child. She concluded the baby was dead as the child stopped crying and so she buried her.