The foster parents of Sherin Mathews, the three-year-old Indian girl who was found dead in a culvert in the US, relinquished custody and parental rights to their biological child.
Wesley and Sini Mathews signed relinquishment paperwork for their biological child on Friday during their scheduled final Child Protective Service (CPS) hearing, according to US media reports.
CPS officials had removed her from the Mathews Richardson home on October 9, two days after her sister Sherin was reported missing. Her body was identified days later.
Her foster father Wesley Mathews has been charged with capital murder in Sherin’s death. Sini was arrested on a charge of child abandonment or endangerment based on her husband’s admission to investigators that they went out to dinner and left Sherin alone the night before she died.
Sini “made the extremely difficult decision to give up her parental rights because, given the circumstances and the pending criminal cases, this is in the best interests of the child. She wants what’s best for her remaining daughter,” said attorney Mitch Nolte who represents the mother.
The CPS has custody of Sherin’s sister, who has been temporarily placed with relatives in the Houston area.
Those relatives, who went through extensive background checks and home studies, plan to adopt the girl, said Marissa Gonzales, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Family Protective Services.
Authorities have said Sherin was killed by “homicidal violence” before her adoptive father hid her body in a Richardson culvert where it went undiscovered for weeks.
The Dallas County capital murder indictment against the father says he killed Sherin “by a manner and means unknown to the grand jury,” court records show.
If convicted, Mathews could face the death penalty, should prosecutors choose to pursue it, or an automatic sentence of life without parole.
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