SHARJAH // A mother placed her six-week-old baby boy into a box weighed down with bricks and threw him into the sea, police said.
The child washed up on the shore at Al Hira corniche in Sharjah in March.
His Ethiopian mother, a housemaid who had overstayed her visa, conceived outside wedlock, officials said.
Police this week arrested the baby’s father and another Ethiopian woman who is accused of helping dispose of the child.
An Emirati man spotted the baby’s body on the beach and reported it to police.
CID launched an investigation and the mother was identified and apprehended with the help of Ajman Police.
Police said the mother was in a relationship with a countryman who lived and worked in Dubai but that he left her before the child was born.
The father told investigators that he knew the maid was pregnant but that he had no knowledge of what happened after he left her.
The mother had delivered the baby with the help of an African woman, who left the country, Sharjah Police said.
The Ethiopian mother had worked for an Emirati family but when her contract was up she told them that she wanted to return to her homeland. The sponsor had given her money to travel home but she had instead allegedly worked illegally as a maid in other homes until she had the baby.
Officers said the mother had tried to cover up the boy’s birth by drowning him, with the help of her friend.
The mother, her friend and the baby’s father were arrested and referred to public prosecution.
tzriqat@thenational.ae
