India police rescue baby ‘buried alive’

NEW DELHI: Indian police rescued a baby as its family was about to bury it alive, officials said yesterday. Officers confronted the infant’s grandfather as he held the child in a blanket, while another man dug a hole with his hands on wasteland in a suburb of the southern city of Hyderabad. The case was made public two weeks after a newborn girl was found in a clay pot at a northern Indian crematorium later making headlines for her “miracle” survival.

In the latest incident, the two men said the infant had died in hospital. But police, tipped off by a taxi driver made suspicious by the events, said they saw the baby move under the blanket. Both men were detained and later released, with the infant undergoing treatment in hospital while an investigation is carried out. “They thought the baby had died and were told by other family members not to bring the body home,” police officer A Srinivasulu said. “We are just happy that the baby was rescued,” the officer said.

In the other case of the newborn found in a clay pot, the baby was believed to have been left for more than two days before she was found by a man digging a grave for his own newborn daughter. India is notorious for the gender killing of baby girls, seen as a financial burden because of the dowry to be paid when they are married. Such discrimination is blamed for India’s skewed sex ratio that stood at 940 females for every 1,000 males, according to a 2011 census.— AFP