The alleged missing child case from a paediatric hospital here turned out to be a death case due to negligence by the child’s own mother and clandestinely disposing it off in a well, seven kms away from the hospital. Police on Saturday morning retrieved the body of the one-and-half-year-old girl from the well at Jobra and sent it for post-mortem.
Police are now digging deep into the case grilling the parents of the deceased, a relative and an auto rickshaw driver at the lalbagh police station here.
Police sources said the mother of the child has confessed that her ailing daughter died after accidentally falling from her lap while she was feeding her sitting on the hospital bed on Friday morning.
She also confessed that frightened over the incident, she disposed of the body without informing the hospital. In order to escape from the ignominy, she cooked up the baby theft story to hoodwink everybody, police said.
Swarnalata Chanda (30) of Khordha district’s Sunakhala area had brought her daughter to the Sishu Bhawan for treatment on Thursday along with her husband Jeetendra. The child was suffering from acute dysentery.
Suspecting the allegations of baby theft, police while verifying CCTV footages established that Swarnalata had actually left the ward with her baby and gone away by an auto rickshaw.
“During interrogation of the parents and the auto rickshaw driver, Swarnalata admitted of the death of the child due to the fatal fall and of dumping the body in a well at Jobra,” said City DCP Sanjiv Arora.