Woman smothers live-in partner’s daughter for wetting sofa, arrested

Rajkot: Angry with her for wetting the sofa, a woman allegedly smothered the two-and-a-half-year-old daughter of her live-in partner at their residence in Vrindavan Park Society in Morbi on Friday evening. The accused, Rashmi Variyavala, was arrested on Saturday, and she confessed to the crime, said police.
According to police, the little girl Yashwi Trivedi, daughter of Dhawal Trivedi, was rushed to Morbi Civil Hospital after the incident, where she was declared brought dead.

When the doctors at the hospital asked about the cause of death, Variyavala and Dhawal maintained that she had suffered injuries after she fell from the sofa. However, this did not convince the doctors and they told Morbi police station officials to send the body for forensic postmortem.

“Meanwhile, Yashwi’s maternal uncle Kiran Vyas came to know about the incident and approached us with a complaint, alleging that Yashwi had not died of the accident and that she had been murdered by her stepmother. In the meantime, Yashwi’s postmortem report confirmed her death was caused by suffocation. After this revelation, we rounded up Variyavala and interrogated her, following which she confessed to the crime,” said an official from Morbi police station.

Variyavala told the cops that as Yashwi had wet the sofa, she was angry with her, and she had smothered her on the sofa itself and then cooked up the story of the accident.

Vyas said that Dhawal had separated from his wife in Surat and shifted to Morbi along with Yashwi and Variyavala, who was his live-in partner. “We had submitted an application to the Surat police, stating that Yashwi’s life was in danger in the care of Variyavala, but the police did not pay any heed to it,” alleged Vyas.