Authorities on Monday said that they will exhume a baby’s body to conduct DNA sampling after a family from Budgam said that the JVC hospital swapped their male child with a dead girl child.
On November 16, The Kashmiriyat reported that a family from Patlibagh Budgam said that the boy was born twelve days ago but on Wednesday the hospital handed over the dead body of a girl. “The medical certificates show that the child was a male,” he said.
The father of the deceased child said that on the day the child was born, the doctors informed him that a boy was born to the couple and also told him that his wife was not keeping well.
“As soon as the delivery happened on 8th November, the staff congratulated me and asked me for Chai (bribe). I gave them all the six hundred rupees I had. They did not allow me to meet my child and said the child was fine and I should take care of my wife, who was not keeping well,” the father said.
Around 1230 AM on Wednesday, they handed me over a child saying that my son had died. “When we took the child for burial, we realized it was a female child. We buried the girl and then came back to the hospital demanding my son be handed over to me,” the father of the girl said.
Staging a protest against the hospital staff, the relatives of the child demanded that the child be handed over to the family.
Meanwhile, Medical Superintendent Dr. Shafa Deva has denied the allegation of the Budgam family and said the hospital will look into the matter from all angles.
“Since family has leveled allegations against the hospital authorities for exchanging their baby it was decided to exhume the body to conduct DNA so that truth shall come to fore,” an official said.
The official said that body will be exhumed in the presence of a medical team from JVC, family members, and some independent witnesses.