FORSYTH COUNTY, Ga. — A Georgia mother who was arrested four years after allegedly leaving her newborn infant in the woods in a plastic bag has been indicted by a grand jury in Forsyth County on attempted murder and one other charge.
The indictment against Karima Jiwani was returned earlier this week. She is charged with one count of criminal attempt to commit murder and one count of cruelty to children in the first degree.
Authorities in Forsyth County announced Jiwani's arrest in May. The case of "Baby India," as the newborn came to be called, gripped Forsyth County after she was found in the woods in 2019 by a family who lived in the area and called 911.
No suspect was ever identified until the announcement of Jiwani's arrest. Authorities had initially said she would also face charges of aggravated assault and reckless abandonment, though those charges do not appear in the indictment returned this week.
"This child was tied up in a plastic bag and thrown into the woods like a bag of trash," Forsyth County Sheriff Ron Freeman said in May. "I can't understand that. I truly wish I could. I struggle, but I don't know how you can understand that. It literally is one of (the) saddest things I've ever seen."
The sheriff said a break in the case finally came in 2022 when they were able to identify the father through DNA data. There was no evidence that the father was ever aware of the pregnancy.
Now four years old, Sheriff Freeman did not want to share many details about the child's current situation in the May press conference but said she was "happy, healthy, in a safe place."
The indictment alleges that Jiwani "did knowingly and intentionally attempt to commit the crime of murder" in "placing her newborn child known as Baby India in a bag and discarding said child in a secluded area on and about Daves Creek Road, Cumming, Georgia."
Jiwani has twice been denied bond, initially shortly after her arrest and again after a bond hearing in June.
Authorities have said Jiwani likely gave birth in a car and then drove around for a period of time with the baby before allegedly abandoning the newborn in the woods.
Sheriff Freeman additionally said evidence indicated she had a "history of hidden and concealed pregnancies and surprise births," adding it appeared that Jiwani went through great lengths to hide her pregnancy with Baby India.
In arguing for bond, her attorneys have detailed that Jiwani is a mother to three other children with a husband, making her unlikely to leave the state. A judge nonetheless deemed her a flight risk.
Jiwani's attorneys argued the case was an example of Jiwani experiencing psychosis and postpartum depression in 2019.
The sheriff emphasized the lengths to which Jiwani allegedly went to leave the baby somewhere she would not be found, forming the basis of the criminal attempt to murder charge.
"She made no effort to leave this child at any safe place where there was any remote possibility of her being located," he said, calling her a "biological parent - I trouble with the word mother - who inexplicably intentionally left her newborn infant to die."