The Kadakkavoor police on Wednesday recorded the arrest of Chandraprabha, 30, of Keezhattingal, near Kadakkavoor, on charge of murdering her eight-month-old baby.
The police said Chandraprabha had called up the police on May 8, requesting help to take the baby to the hospital. When the doctors declared the baby brought dead, her father told the police that she had taken an overdose of sedatives, part of her medication for mental illness. She too said that she could have accidentally rolled over the baby in her sleep, smothering the baby to death.
‘Confession’
However, with the autopsy revealing traces of water in the child’s lungs and after further interrogation, she allegedly confessed to the police that she had held the baby submerged in a water tank on the terrace of her house, and then suffocated the child further till she died of suffocation.
The police said Chandraprabha had committed the crime so that her live-in partner, currently estranged, would return to her. He had left her after he found that she had another affair, from which she got pregnant, when he was in the Gulf. With the other man, an autorickshaw driver, refusing to accept the baby’s paternity, she was trying to get her Gulf paramour back by killing the baby.
Chandraprabha will be produced before court on Thursday. The police are keeping an eye on the two men, one of whom they suspect could have a bigger role in the crime.
