An Indonesian woman has been sentenced to five months' jail after admitting in a district court yesterday that she had abandoned her newborn baby boy in a private estate near Upper Paya Lebar Road on July 27.

The infant was discovered in a recycling bin in Tai Keng Gardens. He was taken to KK Women's and Children's Hospital, where he was found to be in a stable condition with no visible injuries.

At the time of the offence, the 29-year-old offender was working as a maid. The court heard that she had developed a relationship with a Bangladeshi man in 2018, and discovered she was pregnant earlier this year. She wanted to terminate the pregnancy and took pills to end it, but this did not work.

On July 27, the woman, who cannot be named owing to a gag order, felt contractions and gave birth in a bathroom in her employer's home around 1pm. The address was not disclosed.

After cutting the umbilical cord with a pair of scissors, she wrapped the infant in a towel and put him in a paper bag. She then placed the baby inside a recycling bin and propped up the lid so air could enter the bin.

Some time later, a resident of the estate heard the baby crying. The Straits Times in July spoke to a man whose son-in-law heard the infant crying shortly after a family dinner.

Mr Lew, who declined to give his full name, said of his son-in-law: "He heard a strange noise coming from (the bin), and asked some of us for help to check it out. No one dared to open the bin because they thought it might be a cat or a dog, so they called me for help."

After lifting the lid, he spotted the infant. The police were also alerted. Mr Lew's family took the baby out of the bin, and an ambulance arrived soon after.

In an earlier statement, police said they had identified the woman through extensive ground investigations and with the aid of images from closed-circuit television footage provided by residents.

For abandoning a child, the woman could have been jailed for up to seven years and fined.