Agartala, Aug 11 : The Tripura Police have arrested a 29-year-old woman for allegedly strangling her five-month-old child in Tripura's Sepahijala district, officials said on Monday.

The Sonamura police station officer in-charge, Tapas Das, said that the police arrested Suchitra Debbarma for killing her infant daughter Rimi on Sunday when her husband Amit Debbarma went to work in a rubber garden.

He added that as per preliminary inquiry, the accused woman had an illicit affair with another youth in the Rampada Para village.

Local people said that Suchitra killed her daughter to elope with a youth she had been in a relationship with for more than a year.

Das said that when the police team reached the house of Suchitra it found that the child was lying on a bed and her accused mother was absent in the home.

"We immediately shifted the child to Sonamura sub-divisional hospital, where doctors declared the baby brought dead. Post-mortem would be conducted soon," the police official said, adding that Suchitra was subsequently arrested from the village.

Das, quoting the villagers, said that prima facie, it appeared that Suchitra strangled her daughter to death when her husband went out for work at a rubber plantation.

During the initial questioning, the woman confessed that she wanted to kill the baby and elope with another man with whom she had an extramarital affair.

Suchitra's father Nani Debbarma filed an FIR in Sonamura police station and the police started investigation of the case.

Local villagers claimed that Suchitra was frustrated after she was allegedly humiliated often by her in-laws.

Meanwhile, Sonamura's horrific crime is the second such incident in Tripura in the last few days.

Recently, a Tripura State Rifles (TSR) official was arrested for killing his infant daughter at Behalabari in Khowai district.

/IANS