KARACHI: Police recovered a newborn baby from Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC) a few hours after she was kidnapped from Sindh Government Qatar Hospital in Orangi Town on Friday.

The couple involved in the kidnapping had also abducted a newborn girl from Abbasi Shaheed Hospital six months ago who was recovered by law enforcement personnel from their house, Orangi Town SP Abid Ali Baloch told Dawn.

He said the arrested couple claimed that they were issueless and needed children, but police were not satisfied with their argument for a host of reasons.

Suspects involved had also kidnapped a baby girl from Abbasi Shaheed Hospital six months ago

SP Baloch said the wife of Amir, a resident of Gulshan-i-Ghazi in Baldia, had given birth to a baby girl in Qatar Hospital in the early hours of Friday morning. A woman reportedly carrying a file in order to show herself as hospital staff approached the mother at around 10.30am and took her baby by telling the mother that she was not feeling well and needed medical check-up.

After receiving information about the kidnapping, the Orangi Town SP and other senior police officers arrived in the hospital. The mother identified the kidnapper in the CCTV footage obtained from the hospital. With help of the footage and information obtained from other people, police conducted a raid in Orangi Town’s Sector-1 and detained Nazeer, father of the kidnapper, Naila.

On his information, police arrested Nazeer’s son-in-law Faizan and later recovered the baby from JPMC where the woman kidnapper was also arrested.

SP Baloch said the woman kidnapper got the infant admitted to JPMC partly for treatment and partly for a ‘drama’, inviting her relatives to show them that she had given birth to a baby in order to provide ‘legal and social cover’ to the child.

During initial investigation, the couple also confessed that they had kidnapped a newborn girl from Abbasi Shaheed Hospital on Oct 14 last year, who was recovered from their home. Police were trying to locate her parents. The kidnapped couple had named her Jannat.

About the motive behind the kidnapping of babies, SP Baloch said the couple told the investigators that they had no child and wanted children.

But police did not buy their argument for a number of reasons, asking why the couple had kidnapped another child when they had already abducted one six months ago who was in their custody and why they were only interested in kidnapping baby girls, and not boys. Police were also of the opinion that kidnapping of children could not be justified on account of having no children.

The Orangi SP said police were trying to ascertain the exact motive of the kidnappings. He said that during initial investigation, the role of Faizan’s in-laws also appeared to be suspicious and, therefore, police also arrested Nazeer and his wife Musarrat and registered a case against all four suspects on charges of kidnapping children.

This was the second such kidnapping incident in Qatar Hospital over the past three months. A male infant was kidnapped from the hospital in March this year. He was later on recovered from Afghan Basti and police claimed to have apprehended an 11-member group allegedly involved in it. The infant was kidnapped for monetary gains and sold to an issueless couple.

Published in Dawn, June 3rd, 2017