KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 27 — Police have received 424 cases of babies dumped nationwide from 2018 till September this year, which averages to nine a month.

Bukit Aman Sexual, Women and Child Investigations Division principal assistant director Assistant Commissioner Siti Kamsiah Hassan told Utusan Malaysia that over half, or 283 of the 424 of the reported cases involved babies who were found dead.

She also said that of the 424 reported cases, 285 involved babies who were dumped right after being born, while the remaining 139 cases were foetuses.

"Based on police investigations, most of the cases of baby dumping happened in residential areas, with 166 reported cases, followed by the mosque, on the sides of buildings and in brushes.

"What’s even sadder, sometimes we find them in toilets, drains, garbage disposals, even in the graveyard,” she was quoted as saying.

Siti Kamsiah said that in 165 of the 424 reported cases, police believed the babies were abandoned by their birth mothers, while in 59 reported cases, it was the mother’s husband or partner.

She said 236 of the cases are unsolved because the police face identification problems.

"In a lot of the cases, we cannot identify the babies because there’s no record of the baby. A small number of cases, we find notes asking the finder to take care of the baby or arrange the baby's funeral.

"There are also cases where the suspects claim that they found a baby somewhere, but in actual fact, the baby is the result of the relationship they had with their girlfriends,” she was quoted saying.

Siti Kamsiah said that 50 per cent of the cases have no known suspects, while in 30 per cent of the cases, the suspects were between the ages of 18 and 25.

She added that 26 of the reported cases involved those under the age of 18.

"Most of the suspects live on their own, away from their families. So when they get into relationships and get pregnant, they panic and resort to things like this.

"Parents play a big role in this, they must always know or be aware of what their children are up to, be it son or daughter, so cases like these do not happen again,” she was quoted saying.