A 28-year-old woman allegedly decapitated her 35-day-old premature daughter and flung the head to a jungle near her father's place in West Bengal's Nadia district on Friday, police said. She was arrested from her father's house at a village under Haringhata police station, where she has been staying since her return from a hospital in Kolkata two days ago.
The woman early in the morning used a sharp weapon to decapitate the girl born at eight months, threw the head to a jungle near the house and kept the torso in a pot inside the washroom, police said.
Her mother, who used to look after the baby, came out of the room where the three slept after failing to see neither her daughter nor the granddaughter on the bed.
She found her daughter
with her hands soaked in blood and the gruesome incident was gradually unravelled.
As there was complicacy in her pregnancy, she was admitted to a nursing home in Kolkata where the woman delivered the girl, according to local Gram Panchayat member Uttam Debnath.
After the girl was born at just eight months, both mother and daughter were referred to the SSKM Hospital, a state-run facility, where they spent a month and returned home on Wednesday, he said.
The woman's mother said her daughter was suffering from some neurological disease.
She was married to a farmer in neighbouring North 24 Parganas and the couple has an 11-year-old boy.
Police said they are looking into the case from all angles.