Bundle of confusion: Abandoned at birth

Newborn girl rescued from roadside by passers-by.

MULTAN: A baby girl was found abandoned along the roadside on Sunday.

According to village locals, the child had been left outside the gates of a house in the Gulgasht area by unknown people. “When I found her in the evening she was crying and running a slight temperature. She had been wrapped in a blanket and abandoned outside on the road across from our house,” said Gulgasht area B-Block resident Imranul Haq.

Haq said that he and his family had been returning home after Iftar when the heard the child crying. “We looked around for her parents but we didn’t see anyone. We informed the police of the case and took her to the hospital,” he said. “The child was running a slight fever and I don’t know how long she had been left on the road,” he said.

Police officials arrived at the scene and registered the case. The child is currently admitted at the Children’s Complex, where doctors say her condition is stable.

“The baby has some scratches on her face because she rolled onto the gravel of the road and a slight temperature but other than that she is stable,” said a hospital nurse.

Gulgasht Station House Officer (SHO) Nasrullah Warraich told The Express Tribune that they had registered the case.

“It is possible that the parents abandoned the child because they were poor and had too many children or because she was a girl and they had hoped for a boy,” Warraich said.

Haq said that the child was only a few days ago. “It is a sad thing for the parents to have left her on the road but I suppose I am glad I found her and that she is safe.

I will ensure that she is sent to a darul aman and kept safe,” Haq told reporters.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 29^th,  2011.