Grandma on trial for freezing baby to death

Moscow, Nov 23 (IANS/RIA Novosti) A woman is to face trial in Russia on charges of leaving her newborn grandson to freeze to death.

Investigators found that the baby boy froze to death after he was left on a balcony by his grandmother, 37, when the temperature was −18 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 28 degrees Celsius) in Komi republic.

The incident happened in December 2009, but the body was only found in February 2012 by the woman’s partner in a refrigerator freezer. The man called the police and the woman was later detained.

“Fearing prosecution, the woman had kept the baby’s body in a bag in a freezer compartment for two years,” investigators in Vorkuta, Russia’s northernmost town, said.

The woman accused her partner of killing the baby of her 16−year−old daughter. She hid the baby’s death from her daughter by saying she had had the child taken in by an orphanage, Komsomolskaya Pravda reported. The baby’s birth had been kept secret outside the family, so no one looked for it after it died.

A polygraph test proved that the grandmother was guilty of the baby’s death. She faces a possible life term in jail if found guilty.

−−IANS/RIA Novosti

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IANS 2012-11-23 20:06:05