4 min readMumbaiApr 21, 2022 08:35 AM IST
First published on: Apr 21, 2022 at 12:45 AM IST
Twelve years after a woman was booked for throwing her premature one-and-a-half-month-old daughter from the bathroom window of KEM Hospital, leading to her death, a sessions court on Wednesday sentenced the woman to life imprisonment.
Dipika Parmar, now 42, had to undergo treatment after the incident and was diagnosed with post-partum depression.
Additional Sessions Judge Ajay Daga convicted Parmar under sections 302 (murder) and 317 (parent leaving a child with intention to abandon) of the Indian Penal Code.
The incident took place on October 26, 2010, at BMC-run KEM Hospital, where Parmar was admitted a day earlier with her premature twins – a son and daughter. Both were underweight and required treatment.
Around 5 am, Parmar told the nurse on duty in the ward that her daughter has been stolen. The nurse, who deposed as a witness in the case, alerted the security guards, who began looking for the infant. A guard heard a crying baby outside a bathroom window and followed the sound. He, along with Parmar’s husband, found the injured infant lying on a pile of clothes. The infant was shifted to the casualty ward, where she later succumbed to her injuries.
According to the police, Parmar had first claimed that she had gone to wash her clothes when her daughter was stolen. The prosecution, led by Ranjana Budhwant, told the court that the CCTV footage from the ward showed that Parmar had gone to the bathroom with the infant and returned empty-handed. Based on this, she was arrested but granted bail in December 2010.
The prosecution had examined nine witnesses, including three security guards, a nurse, a man present in the ward with his infant at the time of the incident and others.
Maintaining that the prosecution had not examined other independent witnesses, lawyer Devendra Yadav, representing Parmar, told the court that there were discrepancies in the manner in which CCTV camera footage was saved and hence, it could not be relied upon. He also brought as a defence witness then head of department (HOD) of KEM hospital’s psychiatry, under whom Parmar had undergone treatment for post-partum depression after her daughter died.
The HOD told the court that Parmar had earlier twice undergone failed child births – she once had a miscarriage and also lost a child after birth.
She added that Parmar had post-partum disorder and had not eaten, slept or rested properly since the birth of her twins. She said that Parmar and her husband, who suffered from leprosy, were living in poverty and the medical condition of their twins had stressed them out. The doctor told the court that Parmar had told her that they had borrowed over Rs 1 lakh to pay a private hospital during her previous pregnancies.
When she was told that to save her daughter who was born premature, she would have to pay Rs 200 per day for a ICU bed, she was under tremendous pressure, the HOD alleged. She added that Parmar’s son was kept away from her, fearing that she would commit infanticide till her condition improved.
Yadav told the court that despite knowing that Parmar was being treated, her doctor’s statement was not recorded.
Budhwant told the court that while Parmar was treated after her the infant died, she was in a good condition till then and had not made any complaints before the incident took place.
Additional Sessions Judge Ajay Daga convicted Parmar under sections 302 (murder) and 317 (parent leaving a child with intention to abandon) of the Indian Penal Code.
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