Mehsana, Mar 14 (PTI) An offence was registered against four members of a family for allegedly killing a month-old baby girl in December 2019 at Kadi town of Gujarat's Mehsana district in a case of female infanticide, police said on Sunday.
The infant's parents and grandparents had falsely told the investigators that she had died due to suffocation during breastfeeding, but her post-mortem revealed that she was strangulated to death, police said.
The deceased infant's parents and grandparents were booked for murder at Kadi police station on Saturday night after the post-mortem report, a police official said.
The case was registered against them under IPC sections 302 (murder), 120 (B) (criminal conspiracy), and 34 (act done by several persons in furtherance of common intention), and effort was on to arrest them, he said.
The parents of the murdered infant - Hardik and Rina Patel, who have a four-year-old daughter, were booked along with the infant's grandparents- Nita and Upendra Patel, they said.
Deputy Superintendent of Police R R Ahir, who carried out the probe and is a complainant in the case, said that after the infant died, a case of accidental death was filed at Kadi police station on December 22, 2019, with the family members giving the cause of her death to suffocation during breastfeeding.
"However, there was suspicion over her death due to a mark on her neck. Herbody was sent for post-mortem, which has now ascertained the cause of the death as strangulation, after which a case of murder was registered against the four members of the family," he said.
Prima facie, the infant was killed as the family wanted a boy since they already had a girl child, he said, adding that the exact cause will be known after investigation.
