Crime
Woman Who Threw Newborn in Trash Faces 12 years in US Jail
Nausheen Rahman has pleaded guilty to manslaughter, saying that she intended to harm the infant.
An Indian-American woman, Nausheen Rahman, has pleaded guilty to manslaughter charges for throwing her newborn baby into trash minutes after she was born. Rahman told the judge on Sept. 12 that she did this to intentionally harm the infant.
The Staten Island resident has been sentenced to 12 years in jail. Her father Rahman was present in the court, and buried his chin in his hands, while his daughter pleaded guilty, according to the Staten Island Live website. The accused was in custody since March 12, 2016, the day the baby’s corpse was discovered. She was brought into the courtroom in shackles.
Incident That Shook The Nation
Rahman, 28, gave birth to the baby on March 11, 2016. Fearing possible humiliation since she was unmarried, she cut the umbilical cord, put the newborn baby in a bag, and dumped it into a trash can outside her house.
As per the coroner’s report, the baby still had air in her lungs, which turned the case into culpable homicide. During the hearing, Rahman told the prosecutor that she did not check whether the baby was alive before dumping it in the trash.
“I was like, ‘OK, he’s not crying, he’s not moving, maybe he’s dead’,” she told the investigative officers in a video-recorded interview last year. “When I picked it up to put it in the bag, that’s when I saw he wasn’t breathing.”
Rahman added that she never made any attempts to revive the body.
At earlier hearings and questioning sessions with police officials, she revealed that she had no idea she was carrying until a few months before the delivery. She tried her best to hide the pregnancy from her parents and stated that her parents would have killed her as the child’s father was not the man her parents wanted her to marry.
After admitting to the crime, Rahman said that if she was not afraid of her parents, she would have never committed such a crime.
“Rahman’s parents brought her to the Staten Island University Hospital Mar. 11 when she began to complain of vaginal bleeding. She initially denied giving birth; however, after further investigation, she admitted to giving birth to a live baby, putting the infant in a bag and into the trash,” said the prosecutors, India West reported.
No charges have been imposed on the man who fathered the baby.
