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2 families, a shared anxiety: A fear their babies are swapped
While one of the families is on the cusp of getting to the truth on December 4, the other family faces a long-winded fight.
Two families, separated by mere 6 kilometres, living in similar match-box housing, find themselves bound by a similar predicament that is testing their capacity for love and compassion. Seemadevi Kumbhar and Sunita Gangadhar Gajengi delivered their babies three months apart at two of Mumbai’s famed public hospitals, King Edward Memorial and Jerbai Wadia Hospital. Both have alleged that their infants were swapped with another at the hospital.
While one of the families is on the cusp of getting to the truth on December 4, the other family faces a longwinded fight to be reunited with their biological child. What is certain is this: they do not want to live with the niggling doubt that the child they walked out of the hospitals with is not theirs.
Kumbhar had a C-section delivery at KEM Hospital at Parel on September 26 and the nurse at the station told her brother-in-law that she had delivered a boy. However, half hour later the family was handed over a baby girl. Her husband Sunil who works as a freelance AC-repair technician filed a complaint with the Bhoiwada police station and the family refused to take the baby home. As the police investigation dragged on, Kumbhar had to spend two months in the hospital mothering the infant she’s not sure is hers. “I’ve been taking care of the baby like she’s my own right from the beginning and feeding her,” said Kumbhar, “but the doctors and nurses at the hospital treated me poorly. They forced me to sign papers saying that I was responsible for the child.”
On November 3, the Bombay High Court ordered the Bhoiwada police to send a DNA sample of the baby, whom the family calls Priya, to the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) in Kalina. The court also asked the family to take the baby home in the meantime. The FSL verdict will be revealed in front of the High Court judges in the presence of the family and KEM Hospital authorities on December 4.
For Sunita Ganjengi who delivered her baby on June 7, also by C-section, at Parel’s Wadia Hospital, there is proof twice over that the baby girl she is nursing is not hers. Ganjengi delivered at 9.34 am but was shown the infant two hours later, and too briefly. The family was told that the infant, born at a healthy 9 pound, had somehow swallowed water while still in the womb and had to be admitted to the NICU. “We were finally allowed to see her properly only after 9 days,” says Gajengi whose husband works as a tailor. The couple have a 16-year-old daughter but had been trying for a second child for several years including undergoing several rounds of expensive IVF treatment that has depleted their savings. The baby, named Chinni by the family, is “very cute but she doesn’t look like any of us,” says their older daughter.
Pressing ahead with their instinct, the Gajengi family got the baby’s DNA tested at private lab on August 7 which delivered the earthshattering news. Then began their attempt to lodge a complaint with the Bhoiwada police which refused to entertain them. On September 27, the family ran another DNA test through a private lab which reached the same conclusion as the first test: Baby Chinni was not their biological child. “After the second test we wrote several letters to the ACP, then the DCP and then the police commissioner, and only then the police registered an FIR on November 14,” recalled the harried Gangadhar Gajengi.
On Monday, the Bhoiwada police station requested the family to provide photographs of the mother, the entire family and the newborn, raising hope that some resolution was in sight.
“We have no idea how or why the hospital would switch our baby, and that’s not for us to speculate. All we want is our baby,” said Gangadhar Ganjengi, all the while reassuring that they were treating the child they had brought home with the utmost care. “The baby is not at fault. We’re taking care of her just as we would were she our biological child,” he said.
For both families, these days are fraught with stress and high emotion, their feelings of betrayal clashing with the affection they feel for the infant they have brought home. “This one, she feels very hot all the time but she doesn’t cry much, only when she is hungry,” says Seemadevi Kumbhar dandling baby Priya on her knees. She looks lovingly at the child’s face who looks back unblinkingly, and says, “It doesn’t matter to me if it’s (her biological child) a girl or a boy, but all I want is my husband and his family’s doubts to be dispelled.” She will have to wait until December 4 for that.
For the Gangadhar family, once they found out in September that baby Chinni is not theirs, only one thing has been weighing on their minds: how to get their biological child, be it a girl or a boy, back.
Authorities at both, KEM and Wadia, refused to comment saying the matter was under investigation. Wadia Hospital CEO Dr Minnie Bodhanwala went on to say that there was no substance to the Kumbhar family’s allegations despite the two DNA reports. “We deny these allegations and it would not be appropriate to comment at this stage. We will wait for the police findings,” she said. The dean of KEM hospital, Sangeeta Rawat, too said she would not comment as the matter was sub-judice.
