Mother in China dumps 7-month-old baby in a box near piles of rubbish to punish husband after the couple had a fight
- The woman was filmed on CCTV wearing a white T-shirt and denim shorts holding a baby and walking towards a rubbish collection point
- The woman is then seen leaving the baby in a cardboard box and walking away in the widely shared video that has shocked millions in China
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Police in China are investigating a case in which a woman dumped her nearly seven-month-old baby in a box near a rubbish collection centre during a heatwave.
The unnamed woman, from Yiwu in Zhejiang province in eastern China, had quarrelled with her husband before she left her baby in a cardboard box last Sunday afternoon when temperatures in the region were near 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), Chinese news outlet people.cn reported.
The woman was filmed on CCTV wearing a white T-shirt and denim shorts holding a baby with her hands whilst walking towards a rubbish collection centre.
As she reached the station, she is seen stopping and bending over then putting the baby inside a cardboard box. She then took out her smartphone, took a photo of the baby in the box, and sent it to her husband.
The woman then turned around and walked a short distance before she stopped in front of a shop and watched where she had left the baby.
Shortly afterwards, a passer-by discovered the child and called the police.
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Doctors who were called to the scene confirmed that the baby was unharmed. The gender of the baby is not known.
Police told local media the woman said she felt guilty after she had left her baby.
They said the woman didn’t intend to abandon her baby, and was just trying to vent her anger at her husband after the couple had a fight.
The incident remains under police investigation.
After the story was reported and video of the incident emerged online, Chinese social media users expressed shock and anger at the woman’s behaviour.
More than 2 million people viewed the story online and many were enraged by the incident.
“No matter how angry the mum was, she should not do this to her baby,” said one person.
Another asked: “What did her husband do to make her so cruel as to abandon her baby?”
“What if the baby had been picked up by the wrong person or worse?” another said.
“Will she throw her baby out her home window next time she fights with her husband?” asked a Weibo user.
There has been a string of child abandonment cases in China recently which have been widely reported on and shared on social media, sparking outrage.
