Newborn baby found buried alive in shallow grave

Police say child may have been buried ‘with consent or parents’

Police are looking for the parents of a newborn baby who was found buried alive in India.

Bareilly officer Abhinandan Singh told local media in Uttar Pradesh the girl had been found buried three feet deep in an earthenware pot and was only discovered by another man as he attempted to bury his stillborn daughter.

He added: "We are trying to find the parents of the baby and we suspect that this must have happened with their consent."

Hitesh Kumar, who found the infant wrapped in a cloth and crying on Thursday, told the Times of India: “At one point I thought that my daughter had come alive. But the voice was actually coming from inside the pot.”

She is now receiving treatment in the Special Newborn Care unit of the Maharana Pratap District Hospital in Bareilly.

Doctors treating the girl, who weighs 2.4lb, said she may have been able to survive because her size meant she required less oxygen – while adding that it was possible she was only buried for a matter of hours.

Rajesh Kumar Mishra, a local politician, is understood to be funding the girl's medical care.

It follows an incident in which a three-week-old baby was found buried alive, just 70km away from Bareilly in Shahjahanpur.

She was rescued by a passer-by in January and rushed to hospital where her condition was stabilised.

Many regions of India have experienced a gender ratio skewed towards men over the last few decades according to NGO Human Rights Watch, with families using sex-selective abortion to choose boys despite gender screening being illegal.

Daughters can be considered as financial burdens in some sections of Indian society due to existing gender biases in the workplace and the social expectation that parents will pay a dowry on the event of their wedding.

Providing a dowry of money or goods is also illegal in Indiaremains common in some regions.