A housemaid accused of strangling her newborn baby before dumping her body down a garbage chute insists that the infant was dead when it was born.
Abu Dhabi Criminal Court heard the 26-year-old Ethiopian threw her newborn baby down a rubbish chute from the seventh floor of a residential building in Khalidiya in Abu Dhabi.
Prosecutors said the body of the baby girl, which had been wrapped in a piece of cloth inside a plastic bag, was found lying among the waste by the watchman. Prosecutors charged the defendant with murder and becoming pregnant through an illegal sexual relationship.
The woman admitted at the hearing to getting pregnant after having sex out of wedlock and throwing the baby’s body down chute. However, she denied murdering the child. She said: “I delivered the baby in my bedroom by myself after I felt the labour pain. But the child was already dead. She was not breathing.”
She said she cut the placenta and wrapped the body in a cloth before she stuffed it in the bag, which she threw it in the garbage. She then cleaned up the room and returned to work as if nothing happened.
The maid said she was became pregnant in Ethiopia and had hid her pregnancy from her employers. She was working for a Canadian family. Prosecutors said the woman was arrested just a few hours after the discovery of the body was reported to the police.
“The baby’s body was wrapped in a cloth and put it in a plastic bag, which had been tied with a thread at the openings,” said a prosecutor. He added that the maid wanted to cover up the crime, thinking that no one would spot the child’s body.
A forensic report said the baby girl was born alive and that she was strangled. The case was adjourned to March 18.
Very sad…
