Thane: The Thane Sessions Court on Tuesday acquitted a woman accused of allegedly drowning her five-month-old son to death, after the prosecution failed to bring credible evidence before the court.

The court held that the prosecution failed to establish a clear case against the accused, Lilavati Tambe (name changed), who was charged under Sections 302 (murder) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

Sessions Judge S.B. Agrawal, while delivering the verdict, stated that the prosecution had failed to present any credible material to establish Tambe’s guilt. “None of the circumstances indicate that the accused committed the alleged offense,” the court observed.

The case dates back to December 24, 2021, when Tambe, a resident of Mahatma Phule Nagar in Kalwa, reported that her son had gone missing. A day later, the infant’s body was found in a drum filled with water outside a neighbours house. Initially, Tambe alleged that two unidentified women had kidnapped the child, while the child was sleeping in a hammock.

However, during the investigation, while she was taken into custody she had allegedly confessed that she had administered medicine to the child multiple times, which might have lead to the child’s death. Fearing to her husband and father-in-law, she allegedly cooked up the kidnapping story, of how two unknown women had picked up the child from the hammock and threw him in a neighbouring drum, which lead to the child’s death.

The prosecution relied primarily on circumstantial evidence and the accused’s alleged disclosure during custody. However, the court observed that there was no direct evidence linking Tambe to the crime.

Testimonies from key witnesses, including the accused’s husband and father-in-law, did not support the prosecution’s theory. The postmortem report indicated that the cause of death was drowning, but the forensic evidence did-not support the prosecution.