By Mirna Alsharif - NBC News
Nearly four years after a newborn baby was found abandoned inside a plastic bag in a wooded area, authorities in Georgia this week arrested the alleged mother.
Karima Jiwani, 40, was arrested Thursday and charged with attempted murder, aggravated assault, reckless abandonment, first-degree cruelty to minors and other charges, according to the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office, northeast of Atlanta.
The woman was taken into custody by Deputy Sheriff Terry Roper, who was involved in rescuing the girl nearly four years ago.
The little girl found in a plastic bag in Georgia was named India by authorities. Forsyth County Sheriff's Office
Authorities found the baby in a wooded area in Cumming after receiving a 911 call on the night of June 6, 2019, according to the sheriff's office.
The baby, whom authorities named India, was placed in a foster home run by the Georgia Department of Family and Child Services.
The county sheriff's office then released a video of the girl's discovery in hopes of obtaining "credible information" that would allow her to identify and locate her family.
The footage shows an agent opening a plastic bag and finding India covered in fluids and with the umbilical cord tied. Paramedics wrapped the girl in cloth and gave her first aid before transferring her to a local hospital.
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India was found just before severe thunderstorms hit the area, Sheriff Ron H. Freeman told reporters Friday.
"Back then I called it divine intervention and I really believe it, still today," Freeman said. "If you look at everything that had to happen for this little girl to survive, for people to hear a sound in the woods thinking it was a wild animal, but two teenage girls thought it looked like a baby's cry," the officer recalled.
The girls convinced their father to go and see where the sound was coming from in the middle of the night, Freeman said, prompting Deputy Sheriff Roper to rush to the scene and help rescue the baby.
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The investigation lasted thousands of hours and stretched from the Northeast to the middle, Freeman said. About 10 months ago, chaos took a giant step when India's father was identified thanks to a DNA test.
"How a mother, and it turns out I am too, can do something so cruel is incomprehensible to all of us and infuriating," Freeman said. "I am dumbfounded by any reasoning that may exist and how someone can have the ability to let their own child die," he added.
Georgia has a Safe Haven law, which allows a newborn to be dropped off for up to 30 days in a medical facility, fire station or police station without the parents being prosecuted. Freeman said evidence suggests Jiwani allegedly gave birth in a car and drove around "for a significant period of time," without making any effort to invoke the law.
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"This girl was stuffed into a plastic bag and thrown into the woods like a garbage bag. I can't understand it, I wish I could. I struggle, but I don't know how you can understand that. It's literally one of the saddest things I've ever seen," he said.
Jiwani allegedly has "a history of hidden pregnancies and surprise births," and knew about this pregnancy for "quite a considerable period of time and went to extremes to hide it," Freeman revealed.
India is today a happy and healthy girl, the policeman said. Many Forsyth County families offered to foster or adopt the girl when they learned her story, she added.
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"When a biological father didn't want to do what she's supposed to do, Forsyth County covered this child with love, care and prayers and lifted her up, as she's supposed to be," he said.
The FBI's Atlanta office and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation assisted Forsyth authorities in the case, which can now be taken to a grand jury by the District Attorney's office.
