Child’s death after self-delivery in T.Nagar: Nurse arrested on murder charges in Chennai

CHENNAI: Three days after she was booked for self-delivering a child eventually leading to its death, City Police arrested the 24-year-old nurse on Saturday night on murder charges.

On April 30, W Vinisha, who was seven months pregnant, delivered a baby girl in the washroom of her hostel in T Nagar and allegedly chopped off the infant's legs. Her hostel mate, who heard the cries, rescued both of them and took them to a hospital, where the child was declared dead.

Vinisha maintained that the child was stillborn.

Police said that W Vinisha who hails from Kanniyakumari was working in a private hospital in T Nagar and was staying at the staff quarters on South Boag Road.

Investigation revealed that she had hidden the pregnancy from her colleagues. She had allegedly been in a relationship with a software professional but ended it a few months ago. However, when she found that she was pregnant, she attempted to abort the pregnancy but was unsuccessful.

During the early hours of Tuesday, she locked herself in the washroom and tried to self-deliver the child by performing an episiotomy procedure. However, in the process, she chopped off the child's legs, flushed one leg down the toilet, and took the baby out, police said.

Her hostel roommate, who went to check in on her, found the nurse lying in a pool of blood and the child in a bucket. One of the child's legs was on the bathroom floor. She alerted the others in the hostel and moved both of them to the hospital, where the child was declared dead.

Police were alerted about the incident, after which a team recovered the child's body and moved it for a postmortem. "A day before self-delivering the child, she had complained of dizziness and back pain to her colleagues. They had given her medicines but did not suspect that she was pregnant," a police officer said.

Mambalam Police had booked a case under sections 315 (act done with intent to prevent a child being born alive or to cause it to die after birth) and 201 (causing the disappearance of evidence of an offense or giving false information) of the IPC against Vinisha.

After postmortem results, Mambalam Police said that they altered the sections to 302 (murder) IPC and arrested the woman on Saturday. She was produced before a magistrate and remanded to judicial custody.