On the Sunday that the Prime Minister was to speak about the importance of girls and women, a pack of stray dogs was feeding on the body of a newborn girl at the Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) in Ranchi. Three days later, the team of experts probing the Sunday baby horror at RIMS, has thrown in the towel, saying it was a police job to find out how the newborn girl became dog food at the state-run hospital.

RIMS authorities told the investigators about a missing mother-child duo who vanished from the labour room, shortly before the mangled body of a baby was retrieved from canine jaws outside the emergency room.

Body parts of the hours-old baby, (apparently born to a couple from Morabadi at 12.05am on Sunday), was spotted near the hospital’s emergency area by guards around 2am.

According to RIMS night guard Raju, they spotted a dog on the premises with “something like a ball of flesh” in its jaws. “As we shooed it away, the dog ran out and dropped whatever it was munching on. We were horrified to see it was the head of a baby,” Raju said.

The guards rushed to track the dog and found other dogs in a pack vying for a blood-soaked cloth near the SBI Bank on the RIMS premises. “There, we spotted the body of the newborn or whatever had remained of it. It was a girl!” said Anil, another night guard at the hospital, adding that they wrapped the mutilated baby in paper and alerted the police picket.

Munda, the acting OC of Bariatu thana, said they received ‘unofficial information, on the incident from the picket near RIMS on Sunday morning, but no ‘official complaint’. “We suspect the baby was born at RIMS and then abandoned on its premises. The matter calls for a thorough probe. Officially, RIMS is yet to seek our help. We have not received any complaint,” he added.

RIMS, which has often faced charges of shoddy security, reacted with nonchalance, according to a local newspaper. “I have heard of the incident. Since it happened outside RIMS (building), it is not directly linked to the hospital,” acting RIMS director Dr S.K. Choudhary said when asked why the hospital hadn’t registered a police complaint. In fact, one newspaper reported that Dr Choudhary shrugged off all responsibility, even insinuating the baby girl was not one of those born at the RIMS labour room.

However, nurses at the gynaecology department who checked the labour room register said that one infant along with her parents indeed went missing,  soon after delivery in the small hours of Sunday.

“The incident did take place outside the building, but we deemed it our moral responsibility to find out whose child it was. After thoroughly going through the register, we believe she was the first child born to a couple from Morabadi at 12.05am,” said a nurse.

The entry in the register, shows one Santosh Saw as the father of the “underweight” girl. The baby was, however, received by one Dinesh Kumar Gupta.

“Newborns and their mothers are not immediately shifted to the ward after delivery. They are kept on beds near the labour room. This woman and her baby were here too, but we could not find them later,” said another nurse.

Another woman, who delivered her baby an hour earlier, recalled that the family did not look happy because it was a girl child. “It was their first baby and yet no one was cuddling her. I was too tired after my delivery and fell asleep. When I woke up early in the morning, they were all gone. The baby too was gone,” she said.

Another nurse feared that that the newborn was fed alive to the dogs. “Usually, dead babies are abandoned in toilets here. Worse, attempts are made to flush them out. This baby girl was underweight alright, but she must have been alive when she was smuggled out of the labour room.”

On why no FIR had been lodged, Choudhary reiterated that the matter had “nothing to do with RIMS” since it happened “outside the hospital”. In the face of continued criticism for not having a proper mechanism to monitor patients leaving RIMS without discharge papers, he said, “We need to think what can be done.”

“We can just look into files and quiz hospital staff while police have to zero in on the real culprit,” said Dr T. Hembrom, deputy director of health and a member of the probe team, led by Dr Vidya Gupta, the nodal officer of state PCPNDT cell.

On the baby case, Hembrom failed to shed light. “It is very difficult to say whether the girl was dead or alive when it was abandoned on the RIMS premises.”

Reminded about the missing mother and baby, he said, “Well, hospital (RIMS) people told us that she has been traced to Mandar with her child.” But the team did not verify the claim.

“That must be done by the civil surgeon’s office. We (the team) have no means of verifying (whether the woman is indeed in Mandar),” the probe official said.

However, the probe team seems to be confused. Emergency ward records show that a man named Samta Saw of Morabadi, and not Mandar, had admitted a pregnant woman to RIMS at 11.12pm on Saturday. The labour room register shows she delivered a girl child soon after midnight.

“That is the reason I told you that the matter is strictly a police case,” Hembrom said, adding that the team’s findings would be handed over to principal secretary (health) K. Vidyasagar on Wednesday.

[Prepared by Newsnet Desk from published media reports]

  baby eaten, India, Jharkhand, Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS)