Denial of first feed: panel orders prosecution of father

The child rights panel has asked the police to book under the Juvenile Justice Act the superstitious father of a newborn for delaying the baby its first feed for a whole day.

The Kerala State Commission for Protection of Child Rights on Friday directed the Kozhikode District Police Chief and the Mukkom police to book the father, Aboobacker Siddique of Omassery, for denying mother’s milk to his baby.

Siddique had insisted that the newborn should not be fed until after five `baank’ calls (prayer announcements given from mosques five times a day) are heard. This meant that the baby, born in a private hospital at Mukkom in Kozhikode district, had to go without its first feed for 21 hours.

The Kozhikode Rural police on Friday registered a case against the couple Aboobacker and Afsath. They were charged under Sections 75 (cause unnecessary mental and physical suffering to child) and 87 (abetment of offence) of the Juvenile Justice Act.

In their directive, commission chairperson Sobha Koshy and member K. Nazeer asked the Kozhikode District Medical Officer or a doctor authorised by the DMO to visit the baby to find if the baby faced any health hazard because of the denial of breast milk. The police had been asked to book those who had abetted the superstitious father in denying the newborn its feed. Aboobacker is said to have been influenced by a local preacher who had counselled him not to give breast milk to newborns until after five `baank’ calls are heard. His first child too had been denied breast milk for a day.

The hospital authorities had wanted that the baby, born on Wednesday, be given breast milk immediately.

But when Aboobacker stalled it, he was asked to give an undertaking that the hospital was not responsible for any health hazard to the baby because of this.

The unusual incident drew flak from various sections of society and trolls were aplenty on Thursday ridiculing the superstitious father’s cruelty to his baby. In his Facebook post, Kozhikode Collector N. Prasanth said no faith would counsel starving a newborn. Both the father and the abetter needed `treatment,’ he said.