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Jail for Bedok North resident who disposed of her baby in rubbish chute, claimed she didn’t know she was pregnant

SINGAPORE — A 27-year-old woman, who said that she did not know she was pregnant before giving birth, threw her newborn down the rubbish chute of her third-floor flat. On Tuesday (Aug 18), she was sentenced to one-and-a-half years’ jail.

A young woman who dumped her baby was jailed 1.5 years after pleaded guilty to a single charge of attempted culpable homicide not amounting to murder.

A young woman who dumped her baby was jailed 1.5 years after pleaded guilty to a single charge of attempted culpable homicide not amounting to murder.

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  • A young woman missed her menstrual periods for several months but chose not to dwell on it
  • After giving birth in her toilet, she put the baby in a plastic bag, tied it tightly and threw it down the rubbish chute
  • She lied to police officers that she did not know about the case

 

SINGAPORE — A 27-year-old woman, who said that she did not know she was pregnant before giving birth, threw her newborn down the rubbish chute of her third-floor flat.

On Tuesday (Aug 18), she was sentenced to one-and-a-half years’ jail. She cannot be named due to a court order to protect the identity of the child, who is now in the care of foster parents.

The Singaporean woman, who worked as a part-time waitress and cleaner, pleaded guilty to a single charge of attempted culpable homicide not amounting to murder. She appeared in court through a video-link as she has been in remand since her arrest.

In the early hours of Jan 7, she had experienced discomfort in her abdomen and went to the toilet, the court heard. She lived along Bedok North Road at the time.

She had missed her menstrual periods for several months and wondered if she could be pregnant, but chose not to dwell on it. That morning at about 6am, she gave birth in the toilet.

She claimed that she was “shocked” after the delivery, Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Yan Jiakang said.

After carrying the baby boy out of the toilet, she retrieved a plastic bag from the kitchen, placed him in it and tied it up.

“She realised that the victim was moving inside the plastic bag but wanted to get rid of him quickly. Immediately, she opened the door latch to the rubbish chute and with the intention to cause the victim’s death, threw the victim in the plastic bag into the rubbish chute,” DPP Yan added.

She then cleaned up the blood in the flat, took a shower and went back to sleep. She kept mum about what had happened, only telling a friend that she had a miscarriage.

The woman’s pro-bono lawyer, Ms Arias Lim, told the court that tying up the plastic bag with the baby inside was “not a vicious act intended to suffocate the baby”, but rather an “automatic act” akin to disposing of items in a plastic bag down the rubbish chute.

DISCOVERY OF THE BABY

At about 8.30am, cleaners employed by the Aljunied-Hougang Town Council were making their rounds when one of them heard the sound of a baby crying softly. 

The two Bangladeshi men had already pulled the rubbish bin from the chute and loaded it onto a motorised cart.

Mr Patwari Shamin, 24, heard the crying when he closed the chute door. When he moved aside a newspaper at the top of the rubbish bin on the cart, he saw the baby in the white plastic bag, which was tied in a dead knot. The infant was covered in blood.

The cleaners immediately called their supervisor, who arrived with property officers from the town council. One of the officers tore open the plastic bag and saw the boy lying face-up and crying.

He immediately told the cleaning supervisor to call the police and an ambulance, lifted the boy out and asked the cleaners to get clothing to wrap him up and give him some warmth.

They managed to find a T-shirt, shawl and another piece of clothing.

The police and ambulance arrived shortly afterwards and the boy was taken to KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital.

When the police came to his mother’s door the next evening and asked if her family knew anything about an abandoned baby, she denied knowing anything.

The next day, they told her they wanted to interview her and conduct DNA testing.

On the day before the interview on Feb 14, she confessed to her friend that she had thrown the baby into the rubbish chute. On her friend’s advice, she surrendered to the police later that day.

A psychiatrist from the Institute of Mental Health (IMH) diagnosed her with postpartum depression after her arrest, but found no direct contributory link to her offence as the mental illness began after the birth.

The psychiatrist also found that she was not suffering from a major mental illness at the time of her offence.

Other than a fractured clavicle or collarbone, the boy did not have other injuries.

BABY WAS 2.5KG

DPP Yan sought at least two years’ jail, noting that the IMH psychiatrist said the mother was cognisant enough to dispose of her child in a plastic bag and remove evidence by cleaning up the flat.

She also did not come clean to the authorities when they were making door-to-door visits, the prosecutor added.

The defence lawyer asked for probation instead in what she called an “exceptional case”.

Ms Lim argued that her client did not know she was pregnant, being in a state of shock that “in one single moment, she went from being a young unmarried woman to being a mother”.

District Judge Salina Ishak retorted: “So you expect the court to believe that she didn’t know she was pregnant, even though the (hospital) report said that the baby weighed 2.5kg, was a full-term baby, active and crying?”

Ms Lim said that this was her client’s instructions, and that the woman’s family did not notice anything amiss either.

She had also cut the umbilical cord with a pair of kitchen scissors — her parents were not home and she had no one to turn to, the lawyer said.

Other than that, her criminal record was “spotless” besides a stint in the Drug Rehabilitation Centre in 2014 for consuming methamphetamine.

In passing sentence, District Judge Salina, who rejected the notion of probation, agreed with the prosecution on several aggravating factors. 

This included the baby being “extremely vulnerable” and being thrown into a rubbish chute — a “dangerous and unsanitary environment because of the risk of being crushed by falling objects or risk of infection”.

The mother could have been jailed up to seven years, or fined, or both.

Related topics

newborn baby abandoned court crime

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