She was the third girl child of her parents. So, they killed her.

The couple, Madhu Pal, a cycle van-puller of Titagarh, on the northern fringes of the city, and his wife Anu, 30, first gagged the newborn girl and then broke her neck on Saturday night.

To hoodwink the police and neighbours, the couple went to a nearby state-run hospital, BN Bose Hospital at Barrackpore, concealing the girl?s body in a bag, and took admission to establish that Anu had given birth to a stillborn baby.

?We arrested the girl?s father Madhu as the mother?s name was not in the record book of delivery cases,? said Praveen Kumar, superintendent of police, North 24-Parganas.

Anu, 30, a resident of Nonachandanpukur, gave birth to the girl around 9 pm on Saturday. She was admitted to the maternity ward, where Madhu said she had developed gynaecological complications.

At 11 pm, Anu could not be found. The girl?s body was bundled in clothes on her bed. Father Madhu said the child had to be killed because he did not have the means to bring up three girls.