BHOPAL: A 36-year-old mother of four children gave birth to her fifth child, a boy, while allegedly committing suicide in Katni district of Madhya Pradesh on Thursday.
While the woman, identified as Laxmi Thakur, couldn’t be saved, the newborn child was saved owing to timely action by cops and doctors.
It’s perhaps the first case of a child having been delivered during or after his mother allegedly hanged self to death.
According to Katni district police sources, the police control room got the information about a woman having hanged self to death at a cowshed near her house early on Thursday.
A woman sub-inspector Kavita Sahni rushed to the spot and found the woman Laxmi Thakur hanging through the ceiling. She suddenly spotted the newborn tangled in Laxmi’s Saree between her legs, with umbilical cord in situ.
The woman cop carefully put the newborn on a sheet and cleaned him before a team of doctors arrived and cut the umbilical cord to separate the newborn from his dead mother.
The newborn was subsequently admitted at the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) of a government hospital in Katni, where his condition is stated to be stable.
Meanwhile, the police are yet to ascertain the actual reason behind the alleged suicide by nine months pregnant Laxmi, who already had four children, the eldest of them a 16-year-old daughter.