An Indonesian domestic worker was arrested in Kowloon on Saturday for allegedly administering a drug or using an instrument to procure an abortion after a premature baby was found in a washroom at a shopping mall the day before.
A cleaner found a newborn baby in a rubbish bin in the women’s washroom on the seventh floor of the Tsz Wan Shan Shopping Center at 3pm on Friday, Sing Tao Daily reported.
The newborn was a baby boy attached with the placenta and umbilical cord. Staff called the police and the baby was sent to a hospital but pronounced dead after efforts to resuscitate him failed.
Police checked surveillance camera footage and found a non-Chinese woman enter the women’s washroom at about 1pm on Friday. She allegedly stayed inside for 15 minutes, Sing Pao reported.
The investigators noticed that the woman’s body figure had changed when she left the toilet – she no longer had a swollen belly.
Officers located the woman, aged 31, and went to her employer’s home in the Che Cheung Building on Po Tin Lane and arrested her.
It was understood that the domestic worker, who had worked in the city since 2015 to take care of an elderly man living in Tsz Wan Shan, met a local boyfriend and got pregnant.
She had accompanied the old employer out on Friday afternoon but felt pain. She allegedly went to the women’s washroom and the baby was born there. Officers suspect that the woman took drugs to induce an early delivery of her child.