DUBAI // A maid wrapped up her newborn baby in a cloth and hit him repeatedly until he stopped moving before dropping the child’s body in a rubbish bin, the Dubai Criminal Court heard.
“I just wrapped him in a cloth and threw him in a garbage bin because I did not want the child, but I didn’t kill him,” said SA, a 31-year-old Indonesian, in court.
SA is charged with premeditated murder and with having consensual sex outside of wedlock.
Prosecutors said she gave birth to the child in a bathroom at her sponsor’s house on February 27 this year then killed the boy immediately after.
Records stated that Indian truck driver RJ, 36, and two colleagues found the child. “It was nearly 11.30pm when my colleague, TL, heard moaning coming from a bin in Al Barsha 3 where we were emptying bins for a private company,” said RJ, adding that TL thought the noise was a cat.
However, he opened a plastic bag and found the child inside wrapped in a cloth.
“TL screamed and called me and our colleague and showed us the baby. We called police right away,” said RJ.
Policeman AA, 31, told prosecutors the baby was taken to Latifa Hospital but was pronounced dead on arrival.
“Our investigations lead to the maid and when we questioned her she confessed to getting pregnant from a man she met a year ago,” testified AA.
The officer added that SA and her boyfriend would meet in his residence in Al Satwa and have sex. “But when she got pregnant he stopped taking her calls and disappeared,” added the officer.
Records stated that the maid’s employers did not notice she was pregnant.
Prosecutors said SA confessed during interrogations that the baby was born alive but she hit the child until he stopped crying and moving then threw his body into a bin believing he was dead.
SA confessed to a charge of having sex outside of marriage but denied intentionally killing her baby.
The next hearing will be on December 13.
salamir@thenational.ae