Court lessens killer mom’s punishment

A maid who smothered her illegitimate newborn son convinced a jury to drop 20 years from her life term on Sunday.

The Asian housemaid, 32, delivered inside the washroom of the apartment of her sponsor’s sister in Nahdah area at around 10am on Sept.16.2017, according to records at Al Qusais Police Station.

She crammed a piece of cloth in the baby’s mouth. “Yes,” she confessed during Dubai Criminal Court questioning. The court on Jul.25 last year ordered that she be referred to doctors to examine her sanity. Prosecutors demanded the tough est punishment. the court on nov .14 sentenced her to 25 years in jail to be followed by deportation. She appealed. The Appeals Court commuted the jail term to ive years.

A Filipina employee staying inside the apartment said that she saw the maid very exhausted and asked her about it. The maid claimed she was experiencing menstrual cramps. She went to the washroom.

“I knocked on the washroom door several times. She was not opening. She spent around two hours there. She came out with a plastic bag, placed it beside the kitchen, walked to the salon and stretched on a sofa.” At around 3pm her condition worsened. The employee, her husband and sister escorted the maid to a Dubai hospital where a doctor notiied them the maid had just delivered and that was the cause of bleeding.

An Emirati lieutenant said he came across stains in the salon then saw a plastic bag beside the kitchen. “I checked inside the bag and found it contained a pile of women’s clothes, under which there was a baby,” he said.

An Egyptian forensic doctor examined contusions and bruises on the baby’s forehead, in and outside his nose, neck and left cheek besides hemorrhage in the lungs. “He was born alive then smothered,” he said.