A woman has been arrested four years after a newborn baby was found abandoned in a plastic bag.
Karima Jiwani, 40, faces a number of charges in the US state of Georgia, including criminal attempt to commit murder, aggravated assault, reckless abandonment and cruelty to children in the first degree, according to the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office.
Authorities have said that Jiwani, who was arrested on Thursday, is the baby’s biological mother.
Karima Jiwani. Pic: Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office
The baby – later named India – was found in a wooded area in Cumming, Georgia, on the night of 6 June 2019, after two teenaged girls heard the sound of her crying.
A video of the discovery was made public shortly after she was found, as officials appealed to the public for help to find the girl’s parents or why she was abandoned.
In the footage, deputies are seen removing the baby from the plastic bag and wrapping her in a blanket.
She was given first aid, and taken to a local hospital, before later being placed in the care of a foster family.
Baby was ‘thrown away like trash’
Sheriff Ron H Freeman said the investigation took officials from the northeast to the Midwest, but they eventually got their break 10 months ago when India’s father was identified using familial DNA.
There is no indication that the father was involved in abandoning India, however.
Mr Freeman said Jiwani allegedly gave birth to India in a car and drove around “for a significant period of time”, making no effort to use a law which allows a newborn in Georgia to be left at a medical facility, fire station or police station up to 30 days after birth without the parents being prosecuted.
Mr Freeman said that, instead, India had been “tied up in a plastic bag and thrown into the woods like a bag of trash”.
“It’s literally one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen.”