A North Carolina mother has been charged with murder in the death of her 10-year-old son.

Priyanka Tiwari, 33, was charged with murder and negligent child abuse inflicting serious injury, according to WTVD.

Morrisville police were called to Tiwari’s home on Wednesday and found the child, who had been dead for some time and that the boy’s body was a in a state of decomposition, WRAL said.

Investigators said they found very little food in the home and said the child had lost a significant amount of weight in the past month.

A cause of death has not been released.

“Without the autopsy, we don’t know how the child passed away,” Morrisville Police Chief Pete Acosta said.

Police said that family living in India had been repeatedly calling the home for several months to check on the boy, and that officers had been sent to the home eight times in 2023.

According to WNCN, officers were first called the home on March 16 and found Tiwari experiencing a mental health crisis. Two weeks later, Acosta said. Tiwari’s husband asked them to accompany him home to pick up his belongings.

“He was leaving, leaving the home, and so we followed him over there,” Acosta said. “He went and got several bags and left there was no issues.”

The chief also said the husband has a domestic violence protective order against Tiwari, although apparently the child was not included in that order.

Acosta told the station that no one, including his officers, reported anything to the Department of Social Services because no one saw anything of concern until they arrived at the house on Wednesday.

Tiwari made her first court appearance on Friday and requested a public defender, WTVD said. She was ordered held without bond and is due in court again on January 11.

She could face the death penalty or life without parole if convicted on the murder charge and up to 231 months on the child abuse charge.

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[Featured image: Priyanka Tiwari/Wake County Sheriff’s Office]