MOSCOW, November 23 (RIA Novosti) – A woman is to face trial in Russia’s northern Komi Republic on charges of of leaving her newborn grandson to freeze to death.
Investigators found out the baby boy froze to death after he was left on a balcony by his grandmother, 37, when the temperature was -18 degrees Fahrenheit (-28 degrees Celsius).
The incident happened in December 2009, but the body was only found by the woman’s partner in a refrigerator freezer in February 2012. The man called the police and the woman was later detained.
“Fearing prosecution, the woman had kept the baby’s body in a bag in a freezer compartment for two years,” investigators in Vorkuta, Russia’s northernmost town, said.
The woman accused her partner of killing the baby of her 16-year-old daughter. She hid the baby’s death from her daughter by saying she had had the child taken in by an orphanage, Komsomolskaya Pravda reported. The baby’s birth had been kept secret outside the family, so no-one looked for it after it had died.
A polygraph test proved that the grandmother was guilty of the baby’s death. She faces a possible life jail sentence if found guilty.