A young couple from Aichi Prefecture have been arrested for allegedly starving their 3-year-old daughter to death.
It is thought that the girl may have been regularly abused by her parents for more than a year.
Chiaki Tanigawa and his wife, Mariko, both 21, from Taketoyo, Aichi Prefecture, allegedly failed to give their daughter, Iori, sufficient food from mid-November. They told investigators that they often confined the girl in a cardboard box because she behaved badly, local police said.
According to police, an autopsy showed the child weighed only 5 kg -- well below the average of 12 to 15 kg for a girl of her age.
ice quoted the parents, who were arrested Monday for negligence as guardians, as claiming they did not believe the girl would die as she had been fed with milk and water. The child reportedly was unable to eat for four days until she died Sunday.
It was also learned that local child welfare officials, alerted by neighbors and by unusual data in the girl's regular health checkups, had suspected parental abuse since July last year but had been unable to hold full consultations with the parents to address the situation.
The couple, who also have a 1-year-old son, allegedly left their daughter inside the box and went to Mariko Tanigawa's parents' home together with their son at around 6 p.m. that day.