Girl attempts to kill her newborn

Girl attempts to kill her newborn

A police officer checks a shallow pit where a newborn was found buried alive in Chum Phuang district of Nakhon Ratchasima on Wednesday. (Photo by Prasit Tangprasert)
A police officer checks a shallow pit where a newborn was found buried alive in Chum Phuang district of Nakhon Ratchasima on Wednesday. (Photo by Prasit Tangprasert)

NAKHON RATCHASIMA: A girl, 15, was charged with child abandonment and attempted murder after burying her newborn to conceal the pregnancy from her parents.

Pol Lt Col Panuwat Puttakam, an interrogator of the Chum Phuang police station, said on Friday while the girl was underage, the police were bound by law to charge her and she would be interrogated in the presence of child service workers.

"The girl is now in the care of a psychologist and her parents because she is in great fear. She regrets what she did and said she acted on impulse without thinking it through. She feared her parents would find out she had been pregnant," the officer said.

The baby boy survived as a farmer found him soon enough while herding his cows in Ban Nong Kham village of tambon Tha Lad in Chum Phuang district on Wednesday.

"I heard a dog barking and a baby crying in a cassava plantation, so I went there to check. The dog was digging up a dirt pile and the baby's legs emerged," said Usa Nisaikha, the 41-year-old farmer, referring to the plantation about a kilometre from the village.

He and other local residents brought the baby to Chum Phuang Hospital where he was cleaned up and declared healthy.

Pol Lt Col Panuwat said the baby survived because he was buried shallowly.

Chum Phuang district chief Pairat Witayanumat said the girl did not really want to kill her baby but did it out of panic and her parents decided to raise him. He asked local social workers to take care of the teenage mother.

Police were able to identify the girl after she had bought an unusually large number of sanitary napkins at the time.

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