A 66-year-old woman in Vietnam has been sentenced to 13 years in prison for causing the death of her newborn granddaughter and staging a kidnap to hide her body.

The provincial People’s Court on Tuesday handed down the sentence to Pham Thi Xuan, 66, for “murder” as per Article 93 of the Penal Code.

Xuan was found guilty of causing the death of her grandchild, 23-day-old L.M.A., and attempting to hide and dispose of her body.

According to the indictment, the elderly woman came from her hometown in the northern province of Thai Binh to her son’s house in Bim Son Town, Thanh Hoa Province to help take care of A., his daughter, in November 2017.

On November 25, Xuan was holding A. in her arms when she tripped and fell. The baby was weak and wheezing after the fall.

Le Van Thuan, Xuan’s son, was picking up his eldest son from a martial art class, while his wife was at home cleaning their bedroom at the time of the incident.

Instead of calling for help, Xuan assumed the child would not survive and planned to hide the truth as she feared her son and daughter-in-law would be mad at her.

The woman then wrapped a blanket around the newborn, put her in a plastic bag, and hid her in a bush about 30 meters from the house.

She returned and pretended to be unconscious, later claiming that a strange man and woman had attacked her and kidnapped the child.

The following day, the grandmother put the bag containing the baby’s body among other bags of rubbish so that it would be taken away by garbage collectors.

On November 27, the corpse was found at the landfill.

Xuan turned herself in to police on the afternoon of the same day.

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