BABIES SWAPPED GET REUNITED

SHIMLA: It was an emotional end to a baby-swapping case in Shimla. The pangs of separation from an infant they nursed for five months and the joy of being reunited with their child left two pairs of parents overwhelmed.

On May 26, two mothers delivered in a city hospital, but were handed over a wrong baby. The families went on to groom the child — till Wednesday, when they exchanged the babies to get the right one. “Today, I don’t know if I have won or lost,” said Anil Thakur, the father of the baby boy in the episode marked by judicial intervention. He struggled since the child’s birth on May 26 to prove his son had been swapped with a baby girl at the Government Kamla Nehru Hospital.

“Anmol (the baby girl) has now gone back to her family; my son is home. But I’m already missing her,” says Anil, a school teacher.

His wife, Sheetal, who is a nurse at Indira Gandhi Medical College and Hospital, was also torn between agony and ecstasy, as the other couple arrived at the house. Anjana and Jitender Thakur, the parents of the baby girl, paid their visit to hand over the boy and take back their daughter.

The woman broke down as she handed over the boy she named Nityansh to his mother. “I have a six-year-old son and always yearned for a daughter but today, this is heartbreaking,” she said.

The couples renamed the boy Shivaay and the girl Jannat. The police termed the swapping an “isolated and accidental case”.

They said a staff nurse, Pushpa Devi of Shimla, and a midwife, Rupa Devi from Haryana’s Panchkula, were arrested on Tuesday. On the night of May 26, Sheetal says, the staff in the delivery room congratulated her on giving birth to a son, but later handed over a baby girl, which made the parents suspicious

ON MAY 26, TWO MOTHERS DELIVERED IN A CITY HOSPITAL, BUT WERE HANDED OVER A WRONG BABY