A newborn baby girl who didn’t even have a name yet was taken out of her hospital on Wednesday morning and buried alive allegedly by her father because he couldn’t bear the sight of her cleft lip.

The baby was born at 3am on Wednesday at Svay Rieng Provincial Hospital, according to medical staff. Sometime later that morning, Kong Sok, a 29-year-old Svay Rieng town farmer, took his unwanted daughter to the Prey Chhlak pagoda, dug a hole in the ground and buried her in a plot of dirt, where she was left for dead, police say.

Only her cries saved her.

“At 4pm, pagoda boys heard a cry and thought it was a ghost’s voice, so they told monks,” Touch Sithuon, a Svay Rieng town police officer, said.

Continue reading:Child buried alive, saved