Baby abandoned in sewer in Mumbai leaves hospital

This baby is a little over a year old and has already achieved a Guinness record 1:08

(CNN) -

A girl just 5 days old, who was found in a sewer in India's financial capital, Mumbai, has been released from the hospital.

The baby left the hospital this Wednesday.

She was rescued after a Good Samaritan called the Pant Nagar Police Station to report that a baby wrapped in cloth had been "thrown into a sewer," Mumbai Police tweeted Monday.

"The man was alerted when the neighborhood cats created a ruckus," Mumbai Police said.

Senior Police Inspector Suhas Kamble told CNN that the baby was rescued on Sunday by Sheetal Sonawane, an officer who is part of one of Mumbai women's security units known as the Nirbhaya brigade.

These brigades were created in every police station in Mumbai following the alleged rape and murder of a 34-year-old woman in Mumbai earlier this year.

The brigades are named after the pseudonym used to identify the victim of a 2012 gang rape and homicide in New Delhi, which exposed the scandalous rates of sexual assault in India.

• 16-year-old teenager says she was raped by hundreds of men in India

The girl was admitted to Mumbai Rajawadi Hospital and was placed under observation before being released to police on Wednesday, according to Vidya Thakur, the hospital's medical superintendent.

"She was completely fine when she was admitted, but we were a little concerned that she was abandoned and found in a sewer, but she was fine," Thakur told CNN on Thursday.

"Our doctors treated her immediately ... yesterday they released her, she's fine."

After being discharged from the hospital, the baby was handed over to the Mumbai Child Welfare Committee and is being cared for in a foster home, Kamble said.

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On Sunday, the police registered a first preliminary report (FIR, for its acronym in English) against unknown persons for "exposure and abandonment of a child under the age of twelve, by his parents or the person in his charge," according to the corresponding article of the Indian Penal Code.

"The investigation is ongoing," Kamble added.

• They raped and killed a 9-year-old girl in India.

  Her death is part of a larger problem Dalit women face

Gender inequality is widespread in India, where the preference for boys has resulted in the birth of millions of "unwanted" girls, who are often discriminated against in their communities.

A 2020 report from the United Nations Population Fund said that "between 2013 and 2017, around 460,000 girls in India were 'disappeared' at birth each year."

“Missing” girls refer to the number of girls missing from the population within the time period as a cumulative effect of sex selection practices.

In October 2019, a 4-day-old girl was rescued after being found buried alive in a cemetery in northern India.

The baby was taken to safety by an unaware couple in the state of Uttar Pradesh, while they buried their own son who had died in hospital.

CNN's Jack Guy contributed to this report.

Abandoned Baby Mumbai