An Indian-origin pediatrician has been arrested in the US for allegedly killing her 4-year-old daughter and then staging the death as a drowning. According to ABC News, Neha Gupta, a 36-year-old pediatrician from Oklahoma, was arrested on Monday and faces a first-degree murder charge. She is accused of smothering her daughter, Aria Talathi, to death and then attempting to cover it up as a drowning. At the time of the incident, Gupta and her daughter had travelled from Oklahoma City to Florida and were staying at a short-term rental in El Portal, which is where the 4-year-old was found dead.
The incident took place on June 27. Police responded to a 911 call reporting a child drowning in a residential pool. The child was discovered “unresponsive” and taken to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead, the outlet reported.
Police said that Gupta, who shares custody of her daughter with her ex-husband, claimed that the child accidentally drowned after she sneaked out of bed at night and wandered outside. However, her autopsy did not find any water in her lungs or stomach, ruling out drowning.
Instead, medical examiners found “cuts within the mouth and bruising within the cheeks” of the child's face. An official cause of death is still pending. However, the arrest warrant reported that “the injuries are consistent with asphyxiation by smothering,” according to People. Officials also determined that the child was deceased before being placed in the pool.
Authorities concluded that Gupta “attempted to conceal the killing” of her daughter by “staging an accidental drowning within the swimming pool”.
According to the affidavit, Gupta and her ex-husband, Dr Saurabh Talathi, were in the middle of a custody battle. The girl's father didn't know she was visiting Florida and staying at the rental home where the alleged drowning happened.
Following her arrest, Gupta's lawyer, Richard Cooper, said he's disappointed that the Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office succumbed to pressure and rushed to judgment.
“My client had multiple opportunities to flee, but instead stayed and cooperated with law enforcement, answered all their questions, etc. My client feels betrayed by the MDSO. We look forward to a thorough investigation and more facts/evidence to come to light, which will hopefully show that there was no basis to arrest a grieving mother going through an inconceivable tragedy,” the lawyer said, per People.
“She has had the worst tragedy imaginable occur, and then she's locked up without bond and is missing her own daughter's funeral. Common decency would dictate that a little more than 1 day's worth of investigation transpire before making such a dramatic move,” he added.
