Taken, once more: Newborn stolen from PIMS

‘Mysterious’ woman said to have kidnapped baby boy soon after birth.

ISLAMABAD:

Tragedy returned to the Maternal Neonatal Child Health department of the capital’s largest public hospital late Friday night when a couple was robbed of their newborn child before they could even get a proper look at their loved one.

The baby boy was allegedly kidnapped from the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) in exactly the same manner as the November 2013 incident when a baby was kidnapped from the hospital premises.

After the incident, a tussle between the hospital administration and the parents took place as both were holding each other responsible for the incident. The relatives of the baby have demanded the police to recover the child within 24 hours otherwise they would block all main roads of the capital.

Talking to The Express Tribune, Shazia Zia, the boy’s mother, said “It happened because of the security lapse. It is the prime responsibility of the hospital administration to keep a strict check over who is coming in or going out from the ward.”

Shazia, who originally belongs to Karak, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa but currently resides in Farash Town, delivered her first baby on Friday night after a C-section and was later shifted to bed no 70 in the general ward of MNCH, Pims.

At the ward, she came across a dark skinned lady covered in a large gown and her head veiled with a hijab who introduced herself as an attendant of a patient admitted in the same ward, she claimed.

That woman, who could converse in Pashtu, Punjabi and Urdu, tried to get closer to the family by brining them eatables and also helped change the bed sheet, she informed.

“At around midnight, when I and one of my attendants fell asleep, she picked up my baby and informed an attendant of bed 71 that she was taking him outside and then vanished,” she said.

Shazia said when they found the baby missing from its cot they first tried to locate him on their own and later informed the on-duty staff.

“Instead of helping us they started blaming us which was very irritating and frustrating,” she said.

At 3am, when they concluded that their loved one was not in the premises, the relatives started protesting in the hospital and on Saturday morning blocked the road outside Pims as well as the nearby Islamabad Expressway.

The call for the protest was given by Jamaat-e-Islami as the father of the baby, Ziaullah, works in the party’s office as a photocopier.

When contacted, Dr Ayesha Ishani, spokesperson for Pims, said the hospital administration conducted an internal inquiry to probe into the matter.

She agreed that it was a security lapse due to which the incident took place, however, parents should equally be blamed as they should not trust strangers to handle their newborns.

Ishani informed that currently the MNCH department is facing an acute shortage of female security guards. At present there are only four male security guards at the three floors of the MNCH department and it is difficult for them to check a female patient or attendant, she added.

Meanwhile, according to the preliminary report complied by a seven member committee, the family as well as the security staff of Pims were to be blamed for the alleged kidnapping.

Talking to The Express Tribune, a doctor at MNCH ward on the condition of anonymity said there were no CCTV cameras installed in the premises even after a similar incident took place a year ago.

“There is no check on people entering the department and there is no record available with the hospital containing the list of visitors,” said the doctor.

The doctor said it seems like the woman (who allegedly took the baby) was part of the same gang that kidnapped a baby boy in a similar manner and whose body was found from Rawalpindi near the bank of a stream in 2013.

When contacted, an official of the Margalla police said an FIR was registered by the parents of the baby against an unidentified woman and all-out efforts are being made to recover the child.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 11^th, 2015.