Story By:  Ana Marjanovic, Sub-Editor: Michael Leidig, Agency:  Newsflash

A 26-year-old Indonesian woman has been arrested by police after her landlady found seven aborted foetuses in her rented room.

The shocking discovery was made after the mother of the unborn children – a hospital worker identified only by her initials N.M. – moved out.

When Nulfah Anugrahwaty – owner of the boarding house in Makassar – went to clean her room she was reportedly horrified by a terrible smell.

She tracked it down to four taped-up boxes in a corner of the room.

But the landlady was horrified when she opened them and found seven foetuses inside.

Some reports say the foetuses were found in shoe boxes while others say they were all in a single icebox.

Forensics experts arrived on the scene and confirmed that there were seven foetuses in total.

Meanwhile, the police tracked down N.M. in the South Sulawesi regency of Konawe and arrested her boyfriend in the Indonesian province of South Kalimantan.

The couple were taken back to Makassar for the police investigation.

According to reports, N.M. told the police that she and her partner had been carrying out the DIY abortions since 2012.

The last self-termination took place last year.

N.M. said she swallowed an unspecified concoction to abort her pregnancies, adding that her boyfriend helped to extract the unborn babies afterwards.

She also said that they aborted the babies to avoid the stigma of getting pregnant outside wedlock in the Muslim majority country, where abortion is illegal except in special circumstances such as rape.

With many women unable to visit safe abortion clinics, they often turn to other methods, such as self-termination, sometimes resulting in injury or death in extreme cases.

The police are trying to establish why she decided to keep the foetuses in her room instead of burying them.

They have yet to specify what charges the couple is likely to face.