MUMBAI: A 22-year-old woman living has been arrested on charges of abandoning her 15-day-old infant near a dustbin at Mumbai’s Marine Drive, about 75km from her house in Thane district’s Khadavli locality, police said on Wednesday.
The woman and her brother, 28, who accompanied her, were arrested from Khadavli on Tuesday by a police team that had spent 12 days looking for her.
During her interrogation, the young woman told the police that she was forced to marry a man twice her age in her village back home in Bihar. A few months after the wedding, she ran away from her husband’s house and with her brother’s help, came to Maharashtra and lived in Khadavli, said a police officer.
It was much later that she discovered that she was pregnant with a child. But she wanted to start afresh and settle down with someone in Maharashtra, the officer said.
The woman delivered the baby at a government hospital in Ulhasanagar on April 17 and decided to give up the newborn, police said.
Her brother backed her decision and accompanied her to Marine Drive where they left the baby near a dustbin located under Meghdoot flyover. The two told the police that they hoped the child was eventually adopted by a well-to-do family.
Police said the baby’s custody has been given to the child welfare committee at Dongri.
The two suspects were produced before a judge on Wednesday and were granted bail on the condition that they deposit ₹10,000 each in cash as surety.. Police said they didn’t have the money on them and will continue to remain in prison till someone pays the money.
Police said the child survived because a Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation sanitation worker spotted the infant near the dustbin on NS Road at Marine Drive at 7am on May 6 morning and took the baby to a hospital. The baby has been left there just 30 minutes earlier.
Police officers at the Marine Drive police registered a case against unknown persons for abandoning the infant and scanned video footage from dozens of CCTV cameras to track down the culprits, said Vishwanath Kolekar, senior inspector of Marine Drive police station..
A police team comprising inspector Santosh Ahwad, assistant police inspector (API) Rahul Bhandare, police sub inspector (PSI) Rahul Kadam, Dhekde, constables Rameshwar Londhe, Sharad Thakur, Somnath Jaade, Reshma Navge was assigned the task.
In one CCTV video, they did briefly spot a woman with a child.
Kolekar said the police officers went through hours of video recording of CCTV cameras installed in the vicinity of the Marine Drive railway station, and then every railway station along the route for days before they were able to establish that the woman got off at Khandavali.
“The woman and her brother were captured in the CCTV alighting at Khadavali railway station (next to Titwala station on the central railway line). After making inquiries in Khadavli area, we finally managed to trace the mother and her brother and brought them to Mumbai,” said Vishwanath Kolekar, senior inspector of Marine Drive police station.