Police failed to recover a one-year-old baby, who was kidnapped from the medical ward of National Institute of Child Health (NICH), despite the passage of four days after the incident. The baby, Junaid son of Javed, was abducted from the medical ward of NICH on August 20, 2011 and could not be recovered yet.
The baby was suffering from kidney problem and his parents had taken him to NICH on August 11 and since then he was undergoing medical treatment at the hospital until Saturday morning when an unknown woman along with a man came to the facility and took him away, said Mobeen, maternal uncle of the ill-fated child.
The child grandmother, Karim Bibi, was with Junaid at NICH and she was preparing milk for the child when, according to her, a young woman and a man, who get themselves acquainted with her sometime back, took away the child in the morning. He said an FIR has been lodged in Saddar Police Station. The hospital administration is of the opinion that the parents and attendants are supposed to protect their child, he said.
Ironically, the abduction of new born and young children from public hospitals in the city is continued, but the concerned authorities have turned a blind eye toward the issue. Junaid is not the first child to have been abducted from a public hospital in the city, as a newly-born male baby was taken away by the parents of another new-born baby girl from Sobhraj Maternity Hospital Karachi a couple of weeks ago.
The child was, however, returned to his parents after police were involved by the abducted child's parents. Similarly, a new-born was abducted from Civil Hospital Karachi on March 1, a couple of days after his birth, and his parents Ghulam Farid and Jamila are still looking for their abducted child. In this fresh abduction case from the NICH, the infant was taken away in the broad day light from the crowded medical ward of the NICH in the presence of scores of nurses, paramedical staff, doctors and attendants of the children.