DNA holds the key to this tale of two cities and three babies

Parents held in Mumbai for abandoning infant girl, fight in Chennai over newborn boy.

Three babies, two metropolises, one familiar story: nobody wants to be left holding the girl child. In Mumbai, a couple was arrested today for abandoning their daughter despite a DNA test confirming that the four-month-old infant was theirs. Miles away, two newborns in Chennai are about to be subjected to the same test as two sets of parents are squabbling over who gets to take the boy home.

It was an error in putting the right tags on the babies that resulted in the Chennai confusion. On Thursday, the Government Maternity Hospital here admitted Barakkath Begum (24), wife of A S Ansar of Old Washermanpet, and Kamakshi (23), wife of Elangovan of Thiruvotriyur, for delivery.

As per hospital records, Kamakshi delivered at 4.59 pm, while Begum’s baby was born at 5.18 pm in the same operation theatre. Both delivered after Caesarean operations.

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After the surgeries were over and the babies brought to their mothers, Barakkath noticed that she had been given a girl. She claims that she was told she had delivered a boy. Kamakshi was handed over a boy, and her mother claimed she had been told her daughter had given birth to a boy.

The doctors admitted that there may have been a mistake in tagging the mothers and babies after birth.

However, when the nurses tried to take the boy from Kamakshi, she refused to hand him over. Meanwhile, Barakkath’s relatives came down to the hospital in large numbers and started arguing with the staff. When they blocked the road in front of the hospital, the police had to intervene.

The doctors first decided to conduct a blood test, but the confusion continued, as both infants turned out to be B +ve.

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Finally, on Friday morning, senior doctors arrived and decided that the only way out was a DNA test of both babies and their mothers. The test will be conducted on Monday and the report submitted in court. The babies will then be handed over to their respective mothers in the presence of police and a judicial officer.

However, as the example of a baby living in the paediatric ward of Sion Hospital in Mumbai for the past four months shows, it may not be as simple as that. It was in December 2007 that she was born to Sheila and Raj Mani Jaiswal, who live in the slums of Dharavi. However, the parents denied the girl was theirs and filed a police complaint claiming Sheila had delivered a boy.

While a DNA test proved their claims false, the Jaiswals gave an undertaking to the hospital that they were not taking their child and left the hospital. This evening, they were arrested for negligence and abandoning a child. Sheila and Raj, who still insist the girl isn’t theirs, had just finished giving an an hour-long interview to a private news channel when they were picked up in Central Mumbai.

Looking after her for four months now, the nurses at Sion Hospital’s paediatrics ward have given the girl a name: they call her Khushi. The babies in Chennai’s Government Maternity Hospital still carry only tags, that too disputed.