While the city shimmered with lights on the auspicious occasion of Diwali, a heart-wrenching incident unfolded on Malad’s back road near Bangur Nagar police station. Amid the festive brightness, darkness took form when an unidentified woman allegedly abandoned her newborn baby girl, barely one or two days old, near a parked bus by a roadside garden, leaving her to die on the footpath.

Fortunately, destiny had other plans. A passerby out for a walk around 11 pm on Saturday night heard the faint cries of the infant and immediately alerted the police.