Maid jailed for killing fetus

Maid jailed for killing fetus

SINGAPORE (AFP): An Indonesian maid who kept a dead fetus in a shoebox has been jailed along with her Singaporean boyfriend who helped her carry out an illegal abortion, press reports said on Tuesday.

Dwi Astuti, 24, was at least five months pregnant when she swallowed two stomach ulcer pills and inserted two others into her private parts in July, triggering a miscarriage, the Straits Times said.

She wrapped the male fetus in a T-shirt and hid it in a shoebox until her horrified employer discovered it in a storeroom and called the police.

Astuti and her 36-year-old boyfriend Roslan Osman, who supplied her with the pills, were jailed for nine months for illegally causing the miscarriage. She also received a concurrent three-month sentence for submitting another maid's urine for a pregnancy test in April. Under Singapore law, a foreign maid who gets pregnant loses her work permit and has to return home.