Back to where he belongs
Back to where he belongs
The little one was in his mother's lap -- the safest place to be.
Runa Begum wrapped the eight-day-old in a towel to keep him cosy and warm at the air-conditioned media centre of the Rab yesterday.
She couldn't be happier as she got back her child who was stolen from Dhaka Medical College Hospital on August 21. The baby, named Ekhlas Hossain by Runa, and his 10-munite older twin brother, Yasin Hossain, were born just the day before.
Acting on a tip-off, the Rab rescued the baby from Gazipur's Board Bazar area early yesterday. They also detained two women -- Rasheda Khanom alias Parvin, 48, and Belly Akter alias Rahima, 45.
Informed, Runa and her husband Kawsar Hossain Babu rushed to the Rab headquarters and identified their child.
Later at a press conference there, the father said he could identify the baby as there are similarities between the twins.
Expressing gratitude to the media for the stories on the baby theft, the father said he wants his sons to be journalists. As someone quipped it was the Rab who rescued the baby, the father said, “If you insist, one will be a Rab official and the other a journalist.”
Rab Media Wing Director Mufti Mahmud Khan told The Daily Star that they handed over the infant to parents without delay. The authorities concerned will run a DNA test if needed.
At the press briefing, he said Rab members raided the house of Parvin in Board Bazar around 3:00am. Based on her statement, the team rescued the infant from Rahima's house in the same area.
Parvin, who served at different clinics as midwife and owns a pharmacy in Board Bazar, sold the baby to Childless Rahima for Tk 40,000 on the morning of August 21.
“Parvin has previous records of stealing babies from clinics. After stealing a baby, she would tell the parents that their babies were born dead. Later, she would sell the infant to other people,” the Rab official said, based on information provided by the woman during interrogation.
Parvin went to the DMCH on August 20. Posing as an attendant of an imaginary patient, she offered services to the new mother struggling to nurse the twins.
The next day, she disappeared with one of the infants around 7:30am.
Runa later identified the woman from the CCTV footage, said the Rab official.
Sub-Inspector Ferdous Alam, investigating officer of the case filed by the hospital authorities in this connection, said they were working to find out whether hospital employees or anybody else were involved in the incident.