Newborn theft: Police know the suspect’s face, but little else

Mother identifies fake nurse, another patient confirms her presence in ward; police find listed address to be wrong

RAWALPINDI: The mother of a newborn, stolen from Benazir Bhutto Hospital on September 10, identified on Saturday the woman who stole her son.

The CCTV footage shows two women leaving the ward. Aqsa Bibi, 19, identified one of the women as the nurse who had taken the baby from her for vaccination, a BBH official familiar with the investigation said. The process took two weeks because the initial footage captured from the CCTV was fuzzy and had to be sent to a laboratory to be enhanced.

The suspect, the hospital source said, had registered herself at the hospital under a false name and used a false address and National Identity Card (NIC) number. The Waris Khan police had been unable to arrest the suspect till last reports came in on Sunday.

The official said another patient in Ward 5 also saw the video and identified one of the two women as a patient expecting baby, and the other as her attendant. This further solidified investigators belief that the two women committed the crime.

Waris Khan Station House Officer (SHO) Inspector Ijaz Shah said a team was sent to Abbotabad to pick up the suspect from the address listed in the hospital register, but there was no such place.

Three junior BBH maternity ward staff members were taken into police custody for entering the details of the suspect in the register. Hospital rules state that the details must be entered after they are verified from the patient’s NIC, the SHO said.

The police are also looking for other women who were admitted to the hospital from September 5 to 10, in an attempt to trace the suspect in the video.

BBH Medical Superintendent Dr Asif Qadir Mir said besides the police investigation, an official inquiry is underway, with a four-member team headed by a senior female doctor. So far, the three male members of the ward deputed to enter the patient data are under investigation in the case, the MS said.

When asked whether photocopies of the ID cards of the patient of her husband are required for recordkeeping, the MS said it was mandatory for either parent to provide a copy, but the suspect did not do so.

The ID cards were made mandatory after an increase in the number of cases of mothers abandoning newborns at the hospital. The document is also required to get a birth certificate, the MS said.

The head of BBH said the ongoing inquiry would also help the administration identify security lapses and improve safety arrangements at the maternity ward and collect exact, updated patient records.

A hospital source said the suspect’s medical history suggests that she had given birth to three stillborn babies in Abbotabad before coming to BBH, where she gave birth to another stillborn baby. The woman was also listed as having received medical treatment from a private clinic in Rawalpindi, the source said.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 24^th, 2012.