A 25-year-old woman was arrested after she threw her new-born baby into a toilet pit near the southern KwaZulu-Natal town of Harding, police said on Wednesday.
Police spokesperson Captain Zandra Hechter said the woman was arrested on Tuesday night after police received a report from neighbours.
Hechter said the woman told police at the time of her arrest that the baby was stillborn and ”that was her way of burying the child”. The woman claimed she did not know that she was committing a crime.
The police’s Port Shepstone search-and-rescue unit retrieved the body of the dead baby on Wednesday.
Hechter said a post-mortem would be conducted to determine whether the baby had been dead at the time it was thrown into the toilet pit.
The woman was expected to appear in the Harding Magistrate’s Court on Thursday on charges of concealment. — Sapa