BHOPAL: A heart-rending video has gone viral on social media showing an unwed mother throwing her newborn baby with along garbage in Madhya Pradesh’s Chhindwara district. Even before the passers-by could notice the abandoned newborn, the infant was mauled by stray dogs. The baby was taken to hospital only to be declared dead. The infant was declared dead by doctors.The child was born out of wedlock. The woman was arrested by police on Monday.Though the incident happened on Saturday late afternoon, the video surfaced on Sunday, leading to the identification of the accused aged 19 years.
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“She was identified and arrested on Monday. She admitted that it was she who threw the infant along with the garbage fearing social stigma. The girl is a resident of a rural part of the district and was staying in a rented apartment with her younger sister, who is studying in Chhindwara town,” Chhindwara Kotwali police station in-charge, Ashish Dhurvey, told TOI.He said, “Prima facie, the accused said that she was in a relationship with a man and was about to marry him. But things did not work out in their favour.”The abandonment of this newborn in Chhindwara is not an isolated case. Overall, if available data from NCRB is considered, Madhya Pradesh has reported the highest number of cases of abandonment of newborn in the entire country for the past four years.The state reported the highest cases of abandonment in 2019 when 187 cases were registered in the state against 896 cases registered in the entire country. In 2020, the highest number of cases of abandonment of infants was registered in Madhya Pradesh, with a total of 186 such cases registered in the state against 747 cases registered in the entire country.In 2021, the state reported 159 such cases, which was again the highest in the country. Later, in 2022 (the latest available data), the state reported 174 cases against 818 such cases registered in the entire country, which was again the highest in the country.
