Infant suffocates to death after grandmother stuffs wrapper into his mouth for crying

A1-year-old boy has suffocated to death in India after his grandmother stuffed a wrapper into his mouth for crying.

The toddler's mother, identified as Nandini, got separated from her husband after five years of marriage. She and her toddler son then started living with her mother, identified as 50-year-old Nagalakshmi, in the latter's home in Coimbatore, a city in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, reported New Indian Express.

When Nandini returned home from work Wednesday evening, she saw her son lying motionless in his room. She rushed him to a nearby hospital, but the child was declared dead on arrival.

The boy's body was sent for autopsy, which revealed he had a crack on his skull and minor injuries on his body. A wrapper was also found stuffed in his throat.

A case of suspicious death was registered and Nagalakshmi was detained for questioning. It was then that she admitted to killing the toddler.

According to the grandmother's confession to the officers, she was taking care of the boy after her daughter left for work. The child put some object into his mouth at some point, and she hit him because of that. When the boy started crying loudly, she got annoyed and stuffed a wrapper into his mouth.

"When the boy cried out in pain, the irritated woman stuffed the wrapper into his mouth resulting in his death due to suffocation," police said as per DT Next.

The woman was booked after she gave her confession. The charges levied against her were not known.

Many Indian children still experience violence at the hands of their own guardians. According to a study by UNICEF, parents in India use 30 different forms of abuse, both physical and verbal, on kids up to the age of 6 to discipline them. The study, which was done in five major states in the country, showed punishment is still seen as "a widely accepted method to discipline children for both boys and girls in families, schools and at the community level for both girls and boys."

Earlier this week, a woman was arrested in the northern Indian state of Chhattisgarh for allegedly killing her 2-year-old son by banging him against the floor several times. The accused reportedly got fed up with the child's constant demand to be breastfed.