Mother Inserts 10 Needles Inside Baby's Body In Bizarre Ritual

A 27-year-old mother was jailed for eight years Thursday for inserting ten metal needles in the body of her nine-month-old son as part of a bizarre ritual to bring her husband back home. The woman, identified as Mukhayo Yakubova, was from the central Asian republic of Tajikistan.

Yakubova was found guilty of causing grievous bodily harm to the baby, Mudassir Karimov, just so that her 30-year-old husband, a labor migrant in Russia, would come back home. According to reports, the incident came to light in 2018 after a relative found a needle stuck in the child's mouth.

The baby was taken to the Karabolo Hospital in the Tajikistan capital of Dushanbe and an x-ray revealed ten needles in the child's body. Doctors performed several surgeries to remove all the needles from his skull, nose, neck, chest and legs.

"When we removed the needles from the boy's body some of them become rusty. We believe that some needles had been inside for about three months," hospital spokesman Shukhrat Choriev said, according to Daily Mail. After a complaint, police launched an investigation.

Police said the woman confessed to the crime during police interrogations that she inserted needles in her son's body to make her husband "be back at home." The court found Yakubova guilty and sentenced her to eight years in prison.

"The woman was found guilty of causing grievous bodily harm... She can file an appeal with the court decision within the next ten days," a court spokesperson said.

However, Yakubova said she was not guilty as she was forced to confess to the crime during the police interrogations.

"During the first interrogation they threatened to rape me and place my eldest son in an orphanage if I refused to take the blame," Yakubova said. "I do not know how the needles ended up in the body of my son. No mother is able to do this to her child."

Yakubova will reportedly file an appeal against the court's decision.