Blind craze for male baby led a woman to kidnap

The discriminatory practice of ‘son preference’ seems to have been behind the recent kidnapping of boy only a few months old in the city.

The suspect Revathi, 24, had given birth to three girl children, of which two died and only one girl survived. Driven by the desire to have a boy, she reversed her sterilisation and conceived recently. Her husband and in laws made it clear they wanted only a boy.

Police said she returned to maternal home and there, along with her mother hatched a plan to abort her foetus and buy a boy baby. She aborted her baby, but went around with a padded ‘baby bump’. She was walking on the beach on January 12, when she spotted the boy baby of a couple selling balloons there. Offering to get the baby a chance to act in films, she took the mother and grandmother, along with the baby in an auto to Spencer Plaza, the Government Multi Specialty Hospital and later to Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital under pretext of doing a ‘skin test’. Having them waiting outside, she vanished with the child.

She went with the child to the Government Children’s Hospital and her mother Jayalakshmi joined them. “The child could not drink milk from the bottle as he was used to being breast fed. Revathi tried to admit the child on the grounds of ill-health. The staff in the hospital did not admit him, treating him as an out patient. But the duo continued to remain in the hospital, staying put in the corridor. Revathi’s husband’s family also visited her and believed that the child was born to her. As the police were on the look out for her, she did not step out from the hospital. One of the nurses who became suspicious, questioned her. They attempted to escape then”, said a senior police officer.

On January 21 evening, police team searching for the child reached the hospital and rescued the child from them. The child was reunited with his parents. City Police Commissioner A.K.Viswanathan appreciated the entire team including police personnel and hospital staff for rescuing the child.

Revathi and her mother Jayalakshmi were arrested and remanded to judicial custody.