The Criminal Court on Tuesday sentenced a man, 23, to 26 years and three months in jail after he confessed to suffocating his six-month-old stepchild while high on methamphetamines in Pathum Thani province in 2018. He told the court he was upset by the infant's crying.
Witawas Jitthanopajai confessed to covering the baby with a blanket, pressing a pillow over its face and lying on it for half an hour in his rented room in Thanyaburi district of Pathum Thani on the night of Sept 8 last year.
Surveillance camera footage showed he then carried a large basket covered with clothes out of his apartment building and left in a taxi with his wife, Kanchana Tosawang. They were later seen returning to their room without the basket.
A rubbish collector found the baby's body in the basket near a plot of deserted land on Soi Ratchadaniwet in Huai Khwang district of Bangkok the next day.
The murder charge carried a maximum penalty of life imprisonment but the court commuted it to 25 years because Witawas confessed. The court added one more year in jail for concealment of a body and three months for abusing methamphetamine at the time of the murder.
His wife was prosecuted separately for abetting him in the crime.