Thanks to a DNA test, the parentage of a newborn girl in Jodhpur's Ummed Hospital has been established. Her mother is Poonam Kanwar, to whom a baby boy was given on March 25 but was replaced by the girl child, with the hospital authorities pleading a mistake.
Though Poonam and her husband Chain Singh refused to accept their explanation, the woman volunteered to suckle the girl child and now she turns to be her biological mother.
The DNA test result, expedited by the laboratory in Delhi after the intervention of court and authorities, confirmed what the hospital found earlier after matching the blood group of the parents.
Chain Singh, who initially refused to own the girl child after the hospital authorities took away the baby boy, was present in the court of the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate in Jodhpur when the envelope containing the DNA test result was opened on Thursday afternoon. After the findings became known, Singh immediately agreed to accept the girl child.
The controversy over the parentage of the girl child, which nobody seemed keen on taking, and the boy arose when the hospital staff, apparently by mistake, swapped the two children born the same night — March 25. The boy was first given to Poonam, but two hours later she was told that hers was a girl child and the boy belonged to Reshma Devi and Sagar Ram of Wayatu in Barmer district.
Immediately, there was ruckus outside the hospital as Chain Singh and his family members from Siwana, also in Barmer district, protested that he was being deprived of the male child. While the boy remained with Reshma, the girl child, kept in the hospital nursery, was deprived of mother's milk in the first few days. Later Poonam volunteered to suckle the child — while not accepting it as her own — but the hospital authorities did not allow her. The child was later breastfed by her on court intervention.
All's well that ends well. Now, the girl child is accepted by her parents.
However, Chain Singh has filed a petition in the Metropolitan Court asking for damages to the tune of Rs.10 lakh from the hospital authorities — for the distress and inconvenience the episode caused him because of their “negligence” in handling the newborn.
