Police eye bigger hospitals, medical students for dumping babies in Akhtar Colony

Police surgeon says that the culprits probably didn’t know how to get rid of the bodies.

KARACHI:

While investigating the case of the five foetuses found in a garbage dump on February 14, the authorities have so far ruled out the involvement of midwives and small maternity homes.

However, they suspect the involvement of some big hospitals in the area. The police has issued notices to seven maternity homes and hospitals in Mehmoodabad to share their records for deliveries and cases of miscarriages from January 1 to February 13. “Midwives or small maternity homes would not preserve the foetus in chemicals,” said Mohammad Azeem, a police officer at the Mehmoodabad station. “They would just dispose of them.”

Bakht Bhari Chiniot Hospital, one of the hospitals which had to share its medical reports with the police, is located in one of the narrow streets of Azam Town. “Why would we preserve babies?” said its in-charge, Shafiqur Rehman, who shared records of deliveries and miscarriages. “Most foetuses are taken away by the parents for burials. The others, which are only two to three weeks old, bleed out of the body like trash.” According to the data they provided to the police, there were 67 deliveries and two cases of miscarriages between January 1 and February 13. Rehman said that it was ridiculous to assume that maternity homes or hospitals were involved. He felt that medical students might be to blame. “Medical students have to study and examine the foetus,” he said.

At the Naseem Children and General Hospital, which is also a maternity home, deliveries are performed for Rs2,500 and legal miscarriages cost Rs3,000.

The hospital’s administrator Mohammad Shakeel said that they had shared the information with the police and the hospital’s female staff will be sent to the police station for further questioning if needed. Like Rehman, Shakeel also blamed medical colleges.

There is only one medical college located near the garbage dump where the babies were found, Sir Syed Hospital. Its administrator, Aslam Khan, said, however, that their students did not do research on dead babies. “They do a post mortem on the bodies provided by the Edhi centre. Not on children,” he said. “It is not human to do that.”

The chemical

According to police surgeon Hamid Padihar, the chemical that was used to preserve the foetuses could be bought from any pharmacy as it is also a disinfectant. He added that the smell of the chemical was so strong that if it was used to disinfect a room it would be impossible to enter it for hours.

“I believe a maternity home is involved,” he speculated. “They were probably preserving the foetuses because they could not get rid of them. They probably threw them in the bin.” However, he did not rule out the possibility of medical colleges being involved and said that many kept preserved fetuses.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 19^th, 2012.