Woman arrested after landlady smells awful stench and makes horrific discovery inside flat

A WOMAN has been arrested after a cleaner discovered seven aborted foetuses in a room that she had been renting out.

The grim find was made after the mother of the unborn children - a hospital worker identified only as N.M. - moved out of a boarding house in Makassar, Indonesia.

The landlady of the property made the horrific discovery when she went to clean her former tenants room.

She was met with an horrendous smell and tracked the awful stench down to four taped-up boxes in a corner of the room, where she found the foetuses inside.

Conflicting reports suggest the foetuses were either found in shoe boxes or all in a single icebox.

Police were swiftly called to the scene, before tracking down N.M. in the South Sulawesi regency of Konawe.

They also arrested her boyfriend in the Indonesian province of South Kalimantan, roughly 1,000 miles away.

After the couple were taken back to Makassar for questioning, N.M. allegedly told the police that she and her partner had been carrying out the DIY abortions since 2012.

She allegedly claimed that the last self-termination on the premises took place last year.

N.M. then allegedly described how she had swallowed an unspecified concoction to abort her pregnancies, adding that her boyfriend helped to extract the unborn babies afterwards.

When asked why she had taken the drastic actions, she said that they aborted the babies to avoid the stigma of getting pregnant outside wedlock in the Muslim majority country.  

Abortion is illegal in Indonesia except in special circumstances such as rape.

Police are now trying to establish why the suspect decided to keep the foetuses in her room instead of burying them.

They have yet to specify what charges the couple is likely to face.