A sudden pall of mystery has fallen over the deaths of six children in a family over the last 10 years in Tirur. The family and the police alike are agape at the deaths of the infants that took place in mysterious circumstances. Doctors who examined the babies too had no definite reasons to ascribe for the deaths.
The authorities took note of the deaths when the sixth child of Rafeek Tharamal and Shabna died on Tuesday morning.
The three-month-old infant was brought dead to the government hospital at Tirur in the morning, and the body was soon interred at the Korangath Juma Masjid graveyard.
The police intervened following an alert by ASHA workers and the health inspector at the hospital. Rafeek’s elder brother Tharamal Ashraf, who is a municipal councillor at Tirur, filed a formal complaint with the police as part of clearing the air over the deaths.
Post-mortem report
The police exhumed the body and conducted a post-mortem at Government Medical College Hospital, Manjeri.
District Police Chief U. Abdul Kareem said the post-mortem had found nothing unnatural in the death. “So far, there is nothing unnatural. We have sent the internal organs for further examinations,” he said.
Mr. Rafeek’s first child died when it was six months old. The second child was two months old when it died. The third died when it was 25 days old. The fourth child lived up to the age of four.
The fifth and the sixth children were three months old when they died. Four of them were females and two males.
“Neither we nor the doctors who examined the children had any idea why our children could not live. It’s still a mystery. We want this mystery to be cleared. We took our children to several experts available. The doctors at Amrita Hospital said their cause of early deaths might be genetic,” said Mr. Rafeek’s sister Noorjahan.
Mr. Ashraf told The Hindu that the onus lay on the authorities, including the medical community, to clear the mystery that shrouded his brother’s family over the deaths of the children.
