In a shocking incident at Thanjavur Medical College Hospital (TMCH) on Saturday, December 4, a newborn girl was found dead inside a toilet’s flush tank at the ICU ward of the hospital.

According to police, a sanitary worker on Saturday morning had gone to clean the toilets of the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). When she tried to flush the toilet, she noticed that the water did not flush out from the tank. As she opened the tank, to her shock, she found the baby's dead body, police said.

The TMCH management reported the incident to the Thanjavur police, who swiftly conducted an inquiry and sent the body for autopsy. Sources say that there is no maternity ward at TMCH. However, there is a hospital with a maternity ward within a 5 km radius from TMCH.

Thanjavur Deputy Superintendent of Police Kabilan and TMCH inspector Franklin retrieved the CCTV footage from the hospital to conduct an inquiry.

In the CCTV camera, a woman wearing a facemask and covering her head is seen walking through a corridor near the ICU ward, the footage further shows her walking out of the corridor in half an hour.

As there is no maternity ward at TMCH, the police are holding inquiry with in-patients and their attendees if any pregnant woman was spotted. The police are also inquiring if the baby was delivered and later killed or was born dead.

Meanwhile in February this year, a 55-year-old woman was arrested in Madurai for murdering her newborn granddaughter.

Nagammal, who was infuriated that her daughter-in-law gave birth to third girl child, asked the mother to not feed the newborn so that it would die of hunger.

In the police inquiry, it was found that when the newborn’s mother was held up with chores, Nagammal suffocated the baby to death.