Sisters steal baby boy to stop father from remarrying

BHARATPUR: Police arrested two sisters from UP’s Mathura on Monday for allegedly stealing a newborn from a government hospital in Rajasthan’s Bharatpur, but they left the baby on a roadside with a note and a feeding bottle three days later.

The suspects, identified as Shivani Devi and Priyanka Devi, aged 23 and 20, said they wanted to gift a baby boy to their mother who was suffering from depression as their father was planning to remarry after their 12-year-old brother died two years ago.

The women stole the baby on January 10, but were overcome by fear after reading in newspapers about police trying to catch the culprits. They abandoned the boy on January 13 near Rarah village with a handwritten appeal that whoever found him should inform police that this is the baby stolen on January 10.

Bharatpur SP Anil Kumar Tank said the women told them that they initially tried to adopt a boy to stop father Laxman Singh from taking another wife for a son, underscoring a largely patriarchal society’s obsession with a male heir. Also, they approached nurses in hospitals to know if they could buy a baby from a poor family. But they gave up because of the long legal process for adoption, and strict laws and punishment against any distress sale of babies. SURESH FOUJDAR