The Guindy police have arrested a woman who dumped the body of a newborn child in a dustbin after killing it.

The police said that on September 17, conservancy workers spotted a child in a dustbin near the Amma Unavagam on Velachery Main Road in Kannigapuram. The child was lifeless. The workers called the police control room for assistance.

The police sent the body for a post-mortem.

S. Pandian, Assistant Commissioner of Police, said, “We got a clue from CCTV footage, which showed a woman walking at the scene of occurrence. We were investigating whether the child could have been thrown by somebody who came by auto or car. Then we found that the culprit was a nearby resident. Our personnel fanned out in the area and caught the woman who dumped the child.”

The police arrested C. Vasanthi, 22, her boyfriend S. Jayaraj and her mother C. Vijaya. Vasanthi and Jayaraj fell in love while working in a firm and she became pregnant. During interrogation, the mother and daughter said they put the newborn female child in a water-filled vessel and closed it. The child died within half an hour. All this happened with the concurrence of Jayaraj, who promised to marry Vasanthi after a dispute in his house was settled, said the police.