Woman convicted of killing premature baby was in a fit state of mind at the time of crime: Court

Dipika Parmar was on Wednesday sentenced to life imprisonment by the court on charges of murdering her 1.5-month-old premature daughter at KEM Hospital in 2010.

The court said that four witnesses had deposed that after the incident, Parmar started shouting that her child was missing from the cot.

“This piece of evidence, which has gone unchallenged goes to show mental position of the accused, that she was in fit state of her mind and after she abandoned her child after throwing her behind the bathroom, she with an intention to blame some other person started shouting that her one child was missing,” the court said. “This itself clearly goes to show that the accused at the relevant time of incident was in fit state of mind, was knowing that what she had done is wrong and therefore with an intention to save herself started shouting that her one child was missing from the cot. Therefore, the accused failed to satisfy by preponderance of probability that at relevant point of time she was suffering from postpartum disorder,” the court added.

The court said that Parmar had knowingly abandoned her child and was aware that throwing the girl outside the bathroom window,could cause her death. The court said that none of the evidence showed that the accused was undergoing treatment for any mental illness before the incident. It said that her husband was also examined to show her mental state at the time of the incident. Parmar’s lawyer had examined as defence witness the then head of KEM Hospital’s Psychiatry department who had told the court that she had diagnosed that the woman was was suffering from post-partum depression due to her history of failed pregnancies and the ill-health of her premature twins.