The child suffered only a broken leg and was out of danger last night in a city hospital. Her fall was slowed by the branches of a tree, and she landed in the soft dirt of a flower bed.

Her father, Yu Dongrui, a 26-year security guard who works in Hangzhou, was in detention as police sorted out conflicting versions of the event.

The trouble began around 4:30pm on Wednesday at the apartment of Yu's mother-in-law in Jiading District's Jiangqiao Town.

Police said Yu had a strained relationship with his wife and her parents. His wife, surnamed Xu, asked for a divorce two months ago, but he refused, officers said.

Xu, a Henan Province native, has been out of town ever since.

"Yu took sleeping pills in the morning and started drinking in the afternoon," said Zong Yuan of Jiading District Public Security Bureau. "The argument with his mother-in-law started when she asked him to leave her house."

The woman put the baby into Yu's arms, saying she would not look after the child any more, and Yu threw his daughter out the window, Zong said.

But in an interview last night on a Shanghai TV station, the father said it was all an accident and that the child slipped out of his grasp while playing.

A similar incident occurred in Jiading District on October 29, 2005, when an 18-year-old unmarried woman gave birth to a girl in her family's bathroom and threw it from the six-floor building over fear her parents would punish here. The infant died of severe brain injuries. Four month later, the woman was given a three-year sentence for manslaughter.