'Desperate for a son': Bengal woman held for throwing newborn daughter from terrace minutes after birth

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A 22-year-old woman from West Bengal has been arrested in Ghaziabad for the alleged murder of her newborn daughter, whom police say she threw from a terrace minutes after a home birth last week. The incident exposes a tragic sequence of events allegedly driven by a desperate desire for a male child.

The case came to light on the morning of December 5 when Vinay Rawat, a resident of Nehru Nagar’s Rakesh Marg, discovered the body of an infant on his roof and alerted authorities. “The baby appeared to have been born only a few hours earlier,” said Assistant Commissioner of Police (Nandgram) Upasana Pandey, as per The Indian Express.

Police enquiries led them to a rented accommodation where Jharna, the accused, was staying with her sister Savita and brother-in-law Shankar Sen, a native of West Medinipur in West Bengal. Jharna, who had arrived at the house about a month prior while pregnant, initially claimed the child was stillborn.

She told officers the family was “too poor” for a hospital delivery and that she and her sister had tried to dispose of what they believed was a dead baby in a nearby vacant plot, but the body “accidentally” fell onto the neighbour’s terrace.

This account was swiftly dismantled by a post-mortem examination. The autopsy doctor informed police the baby girl was alive when she sustained fatal injuries. “Her skull was broken. Her arm and leg bones were fractured. The injuries were caused within an hour of her birth,” the doctor stated, according to officials cited by The Indian Express.

Confronted with this evidence, police said Jharna confessed during interrogation. She admitted to throwing the alive newborn from the terrace with the intention of disposing of the body.

A harrowing motive emerged from her subsequent statements to investigators. Jharna, who married Badal from Bihar’s Darbhanga a year-and-a-half ago, was allegedly desperate for a son. She disclosed that she had undergone a sex determination test at a private nursing home in Darbhanga five months into her pregnancy, which indicated she was carrying a girl.

Police revealed she had then attempted to terminate the pregnancy. After doctors at a hospital refused an abortion, citing medical complications, she reportedly took medicines suggested by women in her family, which led to a deterioration in her health.

She subsequently travelled to her sister’s Ghaziabad home on November 14. In the early hours of December 5, she went into labour. Despite her sister’s urgings to go to a hospital, Jharna refused and delivered the baby at home around 6 am. According to ACP Pandey, Jharna “said that she had panicked and was scared of informing her husband that she had delivered a girl.”

Approximately 45 minutes after the birth, police allege she took the newborn to the terrace. The infant was thrown, landing 20 feet away on Rawat’s roof. The body was found wrapped in polythene behind a water tank.

Jharna has been booked under Section 91 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) for causing death immediately after birth. Police said statements from her sister and brother-in-law have been recorded and a DNA test will be conducted.