Cops record doc’s statement, 19-year-old under treatment
On Tuesday, the NRI Coastal police, Seawoods, Navi Mumbai, recorded the statement of Dr Sunil Hiwre, who examined the 19-year-old mother who killed her infant, trying to hide her pregnancy from the family
Navi Mumbai: On Tuesday, the NRI Coastal police, Seawoods, Navi Mumbai, recorded the statement of Dr Sunil Hiwre, who examined the 19-year-old mother who killed her infant, trying to hide her pregnancy from the family.
As she undergoes treatment at the Meenatai Thackeray Hospital, in Nerul, Ananya Patil (name changed) knows that it is just a matter of time before she would be behind the bars. The course of events leading up to her present situation, however, is distressing.
Since the time she lost her father at age five, Ananya and her mother were shunted from one relative’s house to another in Yavatmal. Her mother worked as a household help, which did not fetch enough to pay for their upkeep, forcing them to depend on the mercy of the extended family.
The mother and daughter were split up on many occasions, as a single family could not look after the two together. This led to the near-orphan becoming as deserted and an outcast from a parent’s love, to loosely borrow from Charles Dickens.
Fourteen years down the line, when she was being fostered at an uncle’s house, the now 19-year-old woman found solace in her cousin. Word got around and eight months ago, she was extricated from the family and shifted to her aunt’s house in Ulwe.
The fleeting attachment led to a violent turnaround in Ananya’s life.
As reported by this newspaper on January 15, Ananya, gave birth to a baby girl in the bathroom of her aunt’s home and flung it out of the window, to keep the story quiet. A lean woman, her pregnancy did not show right up to the time she delivered.
“Last year, when she was staying with one of her relatives, she entered a relationship with her cousin. When word got around, her mother shifted her to Ulwe,” said assistant commissioner pf police (Turbhe division), Gajanan Rathod.
When she complained of severe stomachache on January 12, her relatives took her to Dr Sunil Hiwre’s clinic nearby. “She came to me at around 9.30pm complaining of menstrual pain. She added that she had not passed motions for three days as well. She did not look pregnant at all. I gave her painkillers and she went home,” said Dr Hiwre. An hour after she was discharged, the relative returned to tell her that Ananya was still in pain, at which point Dr Hiwre advised the family to admit her to Millenium Hospital, in Ulwe and have a sonography done.
“I learnt about her pregnancy two days later when I received a call from the police station. I was shocked to learn what had happened,” Dr Hiwre told HT.
After she had reached home she complained of stomach pain again and went into the bathroom at around midnight. As her uncle stepped out to call an autorickshaw, she delivered the baby in bathroom and threw it along with the umbilical cord from the second-floor window.
As reported earlier, a lifeless eight-month-old newborn was found lying above the meter box of the housing society and immediately rushed to Meenatai Thackeray Hospital by beat marshals. Ananya was now compelled to narrate the course of events.
NRI Coastal police took her in their custody and admitted her to the Nerul hospital. “She had injuries and needed sutures. She has healed but her haemoglobin level is still low. She will be discharged only after it becomes normal. After this, she will undergo a psychiatric evaluation,” said medical officer of the hospital, Dr Pramod Patil.
Hospital sources however, stated that the teen did not show any distress or violent behaviour in the course of the treatment and only expressed regret at having the relationship with her cousin.
Once discharged, she will be arrested under sections 302 (murder) and 315 (Act done with intent to prevent child being born alive or to cause it to die after birth) of the IPC. The case will be further probed by ACP Rathod.
