THE sign above the cot pleads ‘Don’t kill your baby, leave it in the cradle below’.

And for Sobia Afridi, it was a stark reminder of the fate that could have befallen her adopted daughter if she and her husband Amjad had not rescued her.

Sabrena Afridi was just a baby when the Afridis adopted her from the Edhi Orphanage in Karachi, Pakistan.

Now Sabrena is seven, the Marston couple decided she was ready to see where she was left as a child by parents who wanted a better life than they could provide for her.

The family returned to the Edhi Orphanage last month to hand out small gifts to the children which Rye St Anthony School pupil Sabrena had collected for them.

Mrs Afridi said: “One of the hardest things for me was seeing the cot in the orphanage where parents leave their children. There is a skip close to the orphanage where people leave babies to die.

“Some are in bags and some are in parts. Rats and animals sometimes get into the skips.

“One of the things orphanage staff have to do is search the skip every day and save as many as they can.”

Neither Sabrena’s back story, or that of her brother Shariq, three, who was also adopted from the orphanage, is known.

Mrs Afridi said: “Sabrena was very quiet and reserved when we went back to Edhi.

“She asked if her birth parents were there, and we explained that no they weren’t.

“Sabrena also said we should have adopted everyone at the orphanage and brought them home with us.

“It was quite difficult, especially when I sat in the chair where they hand you the babies, but I am glad we have done it.

“It is important for the children to know where they come from. This has inspired all of us to do as much as we can for the orphanage.”

When she was brought back to Oxford, Sabrena was diagnosed with blood disorder thalassaemia, or thal, a condition which can lead to life-threatening anaemia.

Her parents won a long battle with NHS Oxfordshire, which decides how health cash should be spent, to get it to fund a daily tablet, Exjade, to replace painful injections.