A Russian couple has been arrested for chopping their eight-month-old daughter into pieces and mincing her body parts using a meat grinder, the Daily Mail reported on Tuesday.
The child died when the father, Yakov Maiboroda, 33, hit her while attempting to strike the mother, Anastasia, the report said citing Russian police sources.
After realizing the baby had died, the couple decided to dismember the body and call the police claiming their daughter had been kidnapped.
However, when the police arrived at their home in the city of Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia, they arrested the couple on suspicion of murder.
Police officers searched the apartment and found a meat grinder and knives with traces of blood as well as 13 bags of human remains, the Daily Mail said citing Russian news agency Baza media.
According to a report by Russia’s newspaper Mash Media, neighbors said that they frequently heard screams from the couple’s flat after they moved in six months ago and that social services had visited them more than once.
The father, Yakov, “was more violent than usual,” on the day of the crime, and noise and screams “stopped abruptly,” the neighbors reportedly said.
Criminal cases have been filed against the husband, a manager in a company producing honey, and his wife, a trainee pediatric doctor.
Investigative measures are currently being taken in the criminal case to establish all the circumstances of the crime, the Russian Investigative Committee said.
