Woman in Japan held over keeping baby's body in locker 'for years'

TOKYO - Tokyo police said on Tuesday (Sept 25) they had arrested a 49-year-old woman suspected of dumping a stillborn baby's body in a coin locker, amid reports she had moved the corpse around for as many as five years.

"The suspect... left and abandoned the body of an infant inside the locker," near Uguisudani Station, a Tokyo police spokesman told AFP, with the latest incident occurring around Sept 13.

According to the local media, the unemployed woman handed herself in and confessed she had been storing the body in lockers near the station since suffering a stillbirth "four or five years ago".

"I panicked after I did not give birth to a living child and kept the body as I could not dispose of it," she told investigators, according to Kyodo News.

She decided to turn herself in after she was kicked out of the home where she was staying, Kyodo said. She had left the locker key behind and thought someone might discover the body.