Baby abandoned but alive in cinnamon garden
By Priyanwada Ranawaka
A three-day-old baby boy, tied to a cinnamon tree with strips of cloth said to be torn from its own mother's saree was found alive, eight hours after the baby was abandoned in Niyagama, Horangalla, this week.

According to police at about eight in the morning, a worker in the cinnamon plantation, identified as Kaluwadewa Siyaneris, had heard cries similar to that made by a puppy and discovered the ant-bitten baby tied by its neck and hands to a cinnamon tree by two strips torn from a sari.

The Akulawila grama niladhari identified as Cyril Seneviratne, who had been notified, had taken the child to the rural hospital in Galhinda from where it had been transferred to the Karapitiya hospital. In the afternoon of the same day the Pitigala police had arrested the 26-year-old suspected mother of the child.

She had said that her newborn baby was tied in this manner, on the same day she had returned home from the Elpitiya hospital after delivering the baby. She had confessed she had committed this act in fear and embarrassment at giving birth to an illegitimate child, who she claims was fathered by her own brother.

The woman, who is separated from her husband, has three other children. She had told the police that she tied the baby to a medium-sized cinnamon tree and stayed with it till 1 a.m. the next day. "I did not want to kill the child", she had reiterated.

But according to the grama niladhari's statement, the child had been found tied by its neck. "There had been blue marks on the child's neck", said Pitigala SI Jagath Priyantha.

According to him the suspect mother had explained how she had tied the child to the tree, by its arms in order to keep it safe from dogs, till someone finds it and takes it away. The woman has been remanded until January 5.

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