WESTERN PROVINCE

KARONGI — Police in Kibuye have detained a woman suspected to have dumped a baby in the bush. Claudine Musabyimana, 24, allegedly dumped her newly-born baby in Rwinvumba forest recently where the police found it dead.

She had fled to Kigali but police finally arrested her.
Musabyimana admitted dumping the baby, saying she did it because the baby’s father called Niyibizi Tito had run away after raping a young girl.

"I couldn’t bring up his kid when he was of no help to me,” she said. The culprit has a five-year old child who stays with her mother in Nyarusazi.

Asked why she couldn’t give this baby to the grandmother as well, Musabyimana said the mother had only accepted one kid from her. Though the police found the baby dead, Musabyimana says she didn’t kill it.

"I just laid it in the forest with hope that any Good Samaritan would pick it up and take it home and may be later adopt it,” she says. However, residents who thronged police yesterday were not convinced by this statement.

"If Claudine wanted the kid to live she would have left it in a place that would be easily reached by people,” said one concerned woman. The police say Musabyimana would be produced in court for prosecution after compiling all the necessary evidence.

"We have a task of approaching and teaching the Rwandan society about such bad practices,” said Jean-Marie Vianney Rurangirwa, the Karongi district Police commander.

He appealed to courts to start trying such offenders, who harm their own children, saying it would act as a deterrent measure.

"We requested the prosecution to try such people in public and punish them thoroughly, this can act as a deterrent measure,” said the police chief.

This has been the second case of a mother abandoning her kid in Kibuye. However, the first one wasn’t serious because the kid was discovered alive by the mother’s relatives.

Musabyimana regrets her actions and accepts they were not good, "Incase I gave birth to another kid, I wouldn’t throw it away,” she said.

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