Kattappana, Idukki: A woman from Kanchiyar has confessed to strangling her eight-day-old child because she thought the boy bore little resemblance to her husband. Sandhya, aged 28, was arrested on Saturday after bruises were found around the dead infant’s neck.

The woman told her interrogators that she wrapped a cloth around the baby’s neck and strangled him with her hands on Thursday. The police said they have recovered the cloth.

Sandhya has been married to Binu for 10 years. The couple has a nine-year-old daughter. Sandhya and her daughter left Binu a year ago after the timber worker became an alcoholic. Binu later joined his wife in her house.

Around four months ago, social workers on a routine house visit asked Sandhya if she was pregnant. Sandhya ruled out the possibility but the signs were growing more evident. A month ago, social workers persuaded her to go for a scan at a hospital at Kattappana, where she was told she was seven months pregnant.

She was put on a special diet when she was diagnosed with jaundice. She was treated in the Kottayam district hospital and the government medical college hospital for a month. She returned to the medical college hospital later to deliver a boy on November 30.

She went back to her house with the infant on December 6 but she refused to tend to him. She told the police that she was afraid that her husband would disown the child who was fairer and not too similar to him.

She killed the child the next day after her mother, brother and brother’s wife had gone to work. She panicked and called up her husband to say that the child was not moving. Binu and relatives rushed to the house and took the baby to a hospital where he was pronounced dead.

The hospital authorities, however, grew suspicious after spotting the finger marks on the baby’s neck. A post-mortem confirmed that he was murdered. Sandhya has been remanded.

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