A 27-year-old advocate dumped her newborn baby in a bucket inside the toilet of a private hospital on Friday and walked away. Police traced her and the reunited with the mother. This is the fourth instance of a woman abandoning a newborn in the city since August.
The advocate, accompanied by three women, a man and a nine-year-old child, went to the private hospital in Sourastra Nagar, Choolaimedu on the pretext of a check-up at 12.20 a.m, police said.
The duty doctor, Arulkumar, told them that she should be admitted for delivery but she told him that she would come the next day. On coming out of the doctor’s room, the police said that the woman entered the toilet and gave birth to a male child. She dumped the child in a plastic bucket. Around 3.30 a.m, she walked out of the hospital.
Easily traced
Around 5 a.m, hospital staff Jemima heard the cries of a child. She found the child in the bucket. Murugan, the hospital’s receptionist, alerted the Choolaimedu police who came to the spot and investigated.
The advocate had left her address in the visitor’s book of the hospital and police traced her easily.
A senior police officer told The Hindu, “She is a practising advocate in the city. She is unmarried. Fearing social stigma, she abandoned the child in the hospital. She initially denied that the child was born to her. The CCTV footage in the hospital showed her arriving pregnant and leaving with a flat stomach. When we confronted her with the video footage, she admitted.”
The woman was given counselling and reunited with the child, he added.
It may be recalled that a newborn found abandoned in a stormwater drain in K.K. Nagar in August was rescued by a local resident and treated at Egmore hospital. On October 11, another newborn was found abandoned in a burial ground in Karambakkam and rescued by the Valasaravakkam police.
