Teen Mother Arrested Months After Newborn's Body Found In Bag With Kerchief Knotted Tightly Around Neck

A 17-year-old girl was arrested Friday, two months after a newborn baby was found dead in Mumbai, the capital city of western Indian state of Maharashtra.

According to local reports, an auto rickshaw driver found the body of the two-month-old girl in his vehicle on Oct. 30 and alerted the police about it. The body was found in a bag with a kerchief tightly knotted around the neck. During investigation, police interrogated over 3,000 women who had given birth in the last two months.

“Looking at the baby’s clothes, we gathered that she came from a family that wasn’t well-off. She could either have been delivered at home or in a public hospital. We checked every public hospital in Mumbai for babies that had been born in the last two months. Our staff inquired with 3,000 mothers registered with these hospitals but the baby’s mother wasn’t found,” a senior inspector said.

Police then started quizzing women in the nearby areas and found out that a woman, who used to beg with a baby, wasn’t seen for some time. Police tracked down the woman and detained her Friday.

During interrogation, the teen admitted to the crime and said she strangled her newborn to death as her boyfriend suspected that the baby wasn’t his. Medical examination revealed that the girl was underage.