'My baby boy was swapped for a girl'

Sumitra Deb Roy & Jyoti Shelar / DNAFriday, April 17, 2009 3:03 IST Email

Mumbai: A civic-run hospital has again got embroiled in a baby-swap controversy. A fruit vendor, Mohammed Sartaj, 36, has alleged that a baby boy born to his wife, Reshma Bano, was swapped for a girl at a maternity home run by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) in Oshiwara on Wednesday evening.

However, doctors who performed the caesarean section on Reshma, maintain that she had delivered a girl child.

This is not the first such case at a civic hospital. In December 2007, Sheela Jaiswal, 30, had alleged that her boy was swapped for a girl by the doctor at BMC-run Sion Hospital's urban health centre in Dharavi. The couple also refused to accept the DNA test that established that the girl belonged to them.

In January this year, Mohan and Mohini Nerurkar dragged Sion Hospital to court after their baby boy was stolen from the hospital.

When Mohammed Sartaaz, 36, first saw his baby on Wednesday, wrapped in towel in the arms of a ward boy of the BMC-run Oshiwara Maternity Home, he was delighted. It was a boy.

Just half an hour later, Sartaaz's happiness turned into anguish. Two female doctors, who performed the Caesarean on his wife, Reshma Bano, 26, handed him a piece of paper. It said that the new-born was a girl.

"It was a boy. I saw it with my own eyes," Sartaaz said on Thursday. "I immediately dialled 100 and sought police help." The couple, having had two daughters, was keen on a boy.

The Oshiwara Maternity Home authorities maintained that Reshma gave birth to a
girl, but ordered an internal inquiry too. The ward boy, Salauddin Sheikh, who, Sartaaz claimed, took money for showing him the baby, denied that he had brought the new-born out to its father.

Sartaaz, a fruit vendor, admitted Reshma to the hospital on Wednesday evening after her labour pain started. She was wheeled into the operation theatre for a Caesarean section around 5 pm. Prior to that, Sartaaz reportedly had an argument with the doctors, insisting that they should try to deliver the baby normally.

"Around 6 pm, one of the ward boys came out of the operation theatre, holding my baby," said Sartaaz. "He unwrapped the towel and showed me that it was a boy child."

Reshma too said that soon after operation she was told by the doctors that it was a baby boy. "They also asked me whether I wanted to undergo sterilisation. I told them to seek my husband's permission," she said. "I was not fully conscious, but could feel that the doctors were tensed. When I fully regained my senses, I was handed over a girl child. I was shocked."

Despite the couple's claim that it was not their daughter, Bano breastfed the newborn on Wednesday night.

Medical superintendent of Cooper Hospital Dr SS Gawde, who is also the in-charge of the maternity home, said that an internal inquiry had been ordered. "Our records suggest that she delivered a girl child," he said. "There was only one C section on Wednesday evening, so there was no scope of any mismanagement."