Baby’s death: Indian foster mom cleared

Sini Mathews, the Indian-American foster mother of three-year-old special needs girl Sherin Mathews who was found dead in a culvert in suburban Dallas in 2017, was freed from jail after 15 months as the child endangerment charges against her have been dropped in the US due to lack of evidence.

The Dallas County District Attorney’s Office said on Friday that there was not enough evidence to proceed.

Sherin, who was adopted by Wesley Mathews and Sini in 2016, was found dead in a culvert near the family’s home in Richardson, Texas, on October 22, 2017, two weeks after her family reported her missing.

Sini was charged after prosecutors said she left her adopted daughter home alone while she and her husband Wesley went to dinner with their four-year-old biological daughter on the night before the child was reported missing, the report said.

Had she been convicted, she would have faced between two and 20 years behind bars, it said.

The Indian-American couple from Kerala had adopted the girl from an orphanage in Bihar.

The charge was dismissed without prejudice.