A DISTRAUGHT mother has been told a murder investigation into her baby girl's death has been dropped.

Nikiesha Brown died at her Duffryn home in July last year, aged just three-and-a-half months.

Within a week of her death a man in his forties was arrested by police on suspicion of the baby's murder.

But nearly a year after the initial arrest, the child's grieving mother, Lisa Gwyer, was informed this week that a criminal prosecution has now been ruled out because a pathologist's report could not specify the cause of death.

Miss Gwyer, 31, said an initial report showed her daughter had died from a sub-dural haemorrhage - an injury caused by some form of trauma - and suffocation.

And she fears recent high-profile cases involving alleged miscarriages of justice regarding the murder of babies may have influenced the decision not to take the case to court.

She said: "The police submitted a file of evidence and treated it as a murder investigation, and there is other circumstantial evidence.

"All this has been ruled out because of the pathologist report. I have had a ten-month murder investigation hanging over me.

"There were injuries to my daughter that were not natural and I want to know how they were caused.

"I had to wait eight weeks before they could release the body. None of this adds up. Five months ago I was told she had suffered from trauma injury. "Now they are saying it could have been an undetected genetic defect."

An inquest into Nikiesha's death will now be held in the coming months by the Gwent coroner, David Bowen, who has powers to rule her death was unlawful if he feels the evidence is strong enough.

A spokesman for Gwent's Crown Prosecution Service said: "The CPS have to cross an evidential threshold before we are able to begin a prosecution, and in this particular case there was insufficient evidence to substantiate the allegation of murder.

"We were not able to proceed."