A mother, a son given up for dead, a promise of reunion two decades later - Sarala Kumari's story had the makings of a Bollywood potboiler, but from then on the script went awry.
Unable to handle the anxiety brought on by her stranger-than-fiction situation, the 60-year-old retired Kerala
University professor committed suicide on Thursday.
The story began in 1990. Sarala Kumari had given birth to a girl child, who died of infection hours later. Over the last two decades, she and her husband, who live on the outskirts of Thiruvananthapuram, had reconciled to their childless existence. Then, Kumari received an anonymous letter earlier this year saying she had given birth to a boy, who was swapped with the girl, and that her son, now 21, was living with foster parents.
On Nov 12 the Thiruvananthapuram additional judicial magistrate ordered DNA tests on Sarala Kumari and the 21-year-old youth to settle the former’s claim that she was his mother.
Inquires led Sarala Kumari to the Thiruvananthapuram Corporation's birth registry, where she found that a boy had been born at Gee Gee Hospital — to a couple from Varakala, 40 km north of the state capital — at about the same time as her "daughter".
Police inspector A Pramod Kumar who is investigating the case said, "She was upset with the way the youth’s parents were not co-operating with the DNA test. Besides her case got wide publicity. Her relatives told us this really worried her."