Depressed mum who killed baby set for sentencing

A depressed young mother is to be sentenced for smothering her baby daughter and throwing her body into a Melbourne creek.

Sofina Nikat, 24, has pleaded guilty to infanticide over the April 2016 death of 15-month-old Sanaya Sahib.

The Fijian-born woman was originally charged with murder but this was downgraded because she was depressed when she killed Sanaya.

Nikat took the child to a Heidelberg West park and played with her before suffocating her until she stopped moving.

She told police a barefoot man of African appearance who smelled of alcohol had snatched Sanaya from her pram.

The girl's body was found in a creek, and Nikat admitted what she did three days after the killing.

The young mum had had an arranged marriage with Sanaya's father and the pair separated during her pregnancy.

She and Sanaya had been living in women's refuges in the months before the killing.

At an earlier hearing, Nikat's defence lawyer asked Justice Lex Lasry to consider a community corrections order.

A psychologist had found Nikat was suffering a depressive illness as a result of giving birth to Sanaya in January 2015.

But prosecutors want her jailed. The maximum penalty for infanticide is five years' imprisonment.

Nikat is due to be sentenced in the Supreme Court on Thursday.