The Office of the Attorney General (OAG) forwarded the case, involving a 21-year-old woman from Wangdue Phodrang for abandoning her infant child, to the Punakha District Court yesterday.
The incident took place in July this year at Lobesa, Punakha.
According to the OAG, the accused delivered her baby girl silently in their toilet and threw it outside from the window at night. Later, the house owner heard a continuous sound of a baby crying outside her house. She then informed the police.
As per the investigation report, the accused have deliberately abandoned the child as her boyfriend denied being the father of the baby. OAG states that the accused had an affair last year with a monk from her village, while she was working in a hotel in Thimphu. She confessed to having got pregnant from there. Her boyfriend disappeared from her life and denied that he was the baby’s father after she informed him about the four-month-old in her womb. The boyfriend is reported to be in a different monastery outside the country at present.
Later towards the beginning of this year, the accused resigned from the hotel in Thimphu and joined in another hotel in Lobesa in Punakha. The accused was staying with her sister during the time of the incident. The baby is now about two months old and in stable condition with the accused and her parents. The Accused is currently out on bail.
The OAG is charging the accused for a misdemeanour, which has a minimum prison term of one year to the maximum prison term of three years.
Changa Dorji
