The Richardson Police on Thursday arrested Sini Mathews, the foster mother of the three-year-old Indian girl who was found dead in a culvert near their home in Dallas in the United States in October, the Dallas Observer reported.

On October 6, the day before Sherin Mathews was reported missing, Sini Mathews and her husband Wesley Mathews went out for dinner with their biological daughter, leaving the toddler alone because she refused to drink her milk, the police said.

According to an affidavit, father Wesley Mathews told the police that when they returned one-and-a-half hours later, the child was still in the kitchen. The police, however said they have not yet ascertained if the child was alive when they returned home, according to the Dallas News.

Sini Mathews, an Indian-American registered nurse, was charged with abandoning or endangering a child, a state jail felony. In the US state of Texas, a state jail felony is an offence that is punishable by confinement in a state prison for a period between six months and two years.

Wesley Mathews had reported Sherin missing from near Dallas on October 7. He had told the police that his daughter went missing after he told her to stand outside their house at 3 am as a punishment for not drinking milk. He had claimed she was malnourished when she was adopted, and they had to put her on a special diet that included feeding her whenever she was awake.

After Sherin’s body was found in a culvert close to their home in Richardson, Wesley Mathew changed his story and told the Texas Police that he was with Sherin in the garage trying to get her to drink her milk and saw her die after choking. He was arrested again after he changed his story.