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The vegetable garden where a woman is suspected of illegally burying her child is cordoned off on Thursday. (Yonhap) |
A mother has been put under emergency detention on charges of secretly burying her 1-day-old baby girl in a family vegetable garden after she died in the western city of Incheon, police said Thursday.
The woman in her 40s, who was detained Wednesday on charges of abandonment of a corpse, told police that her newborn died a day after she was born in August 2016 at a hospital in Incheon and she abandoned the body in a garden in Gimpo, just north of Incheon.
She also told police that she buried the baby without a funeral as the baby died shortly after birth. Her arrest came about a month before the expiration of the seven-year statute of limitations for body abandonment.
It was unclear why the baby died.
The case was revealed after police received reports of undocumented baby cases by the city government and conducted an investigation into them.
Police plan to expand their investigation into the exact cause of the baby's death by questioning the suspect and her ex-husband, while considering applying a murder charge against the mother if criminal suspicions are found.
In a separate case revealed Thursday, police in Yongin, south of Seoul, also arrested the father of a newborn on charges of killing the baby and burying the body in 2015.
Further details were not immediately available.
A nationwide campaign under way to confirm the well-being of more than 2,000 undocumented babies born since 2015 has led to the exposure of a string of child abuse cases in the country.
Police said Wednesday they are investigating 400 unregistered baby cases, with 15 babies confirmed dead so far, warning the number is expected to keep rising. (Yonhap)
