Mumbai, Jan 19 (Mid-day) : A newborn baby was thrown out from the window of a building in Versova on Saturday. Police suspect a maid on the sixth floor committed the crime, as she was an unmarried mother.

According to the sources at the Versova police station, the cops received an anonymous call from a resident of Atlantis, a posh six-storey residential building on J P Road, on Saturday night. The caller said the body of a newborn child was lying dead in a pool of blood.
When police reached the spot, they were aghast at the sight of the baby which had been born just hours ago. Starting their investigations, police went to a nearby maternity hospital next to the building, but learnt that no child had been delivered there in the last four days.
They then took to questioning residents of each flat in the tower. When they reached a sixth-floor flat, they were told the owner lived elsewhere, but a young maid had been seen in the house a couple of days ago. When police entered the flat, they found the young girl inside, around 18-20 years of age, who was bleeding.

When asked about her medical condition, the girl didn’t give proper replies and was taken to Cooper Hospital for treatment. A police officer from Versova police station said, “This girl is a suspect since initial medical tests suggested she had recently delivered a child.” Police later confirmed that the girl had gotten pregnant due to an affair.

On Saturday night, she went into labour and delivered the child in the toilet. Fearing that she would get ostracised and ridiculed by society, she got scared and threw the baby from the toilet window. Police sources also added that the owner of the flat lives in another place.

On being questioned by the Versova police, the owner said they were not aware of any such incident and had never asked the girl about her pregnancy. They said she had started working for them six months ago, and stayed with them in their bungalow.

Two days before the incident, the girl had requested her employers to grant her leave and let her stay in their Atlantis flat, since she needed to rest. The owners allowed her to do so. “We have registered a case under Sections 302 (murder) and 318 (concealment of birth by secret disposal of dead body).

We are waiting for the girl to get discharged from the hospital so we can continue further investigation,” said Satyanarayan Choudhary, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Zone IX.