Woman held for strangling baby

The city police have arrested a 27-year-old woman for strangling her 26-day-old infant daughter in Rajagopalnagar on July 30.

The accused has been identified as Pavithra, a resident of Laggere in Rajagopalnagar. The jurisdictional police took up a suo motu case and arrested the accused after the latter confessed to the crime.

In his complaint, Sub-Inspector Shivaraj M J, attached with Rajagopalnagar police station, said Siddapura police registered a case due to the unnatural death of the accused's child, who, according to the mother, had been suffering from wheezing and vomiting.

Pavithra, who had recently delivered the girl child in her maternal house in Kunigal, had rushed her baby to the Indira Gandhi Children’s Hospital but doctors declared her brought dead.

As it was a case of unnatural death, police had doctors from the Victoria Hospital perform a postmortem. To their shock, they discovered that the cause of death was due to asphyxiation as a result of ligature strangulation.

Armed with the report, police confronted Pavithra, who confessed that she strangled her child using a veil.

In her confession, Pavitra said she already had a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, and that her second child too was a girl with health problems.

Rajagopalnagar police took up a suo motu case and arrested Pavithra as her husband was uncooperative. She was produced her before a magistrate who remanded her in judicial custody.