Japanese mother held for dumping newborn’s body in locker

Tokyo : A 25-year-old Japanese mother was arrested on Saturday for killing her newborn baby at a cafe here and dumping the corpse in a locker, the police said.

The infant’s remains were found wrapped in a vinyl bag inside a suitcase in the locker by police after an employee of the company that operates the lockers reported a foul smell, according to Fuji TV.

The woman, Mao Togawa, was detained on suspicion of abandoning a body, a spokesman for the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department said.

Police said Mao Togawa admitted to killing the baby after she gave birth in January in a private room at a cafe in Tokyo’s Kabukicho red-light district. She is likely to face a murder charge, Japan Today reported.

She told police that when the baby was born, she became frightened someone would find out after the infant cried, so she strangled her daughter with a towel, according to the report.

Togawa then put the baby’s body in the suitcase and put it in the locker, which is outside a building about 200 metres from Seibu-Shinjuku Station.

Police said Togawa had been renting the locker continuously since then and that surveillance camera footage had shown her putting coins in the locker — in a busy area with several eateries and hotels — to keep it closed.

 Published on: June 2, 2018 at 16:06 IST

IANS