RAWALPINDI: The newborn baby stolen from the labour room at the Military Hospital (MH) on April 17 was reunited with his parents, on Sunday. Four members of a family including two teenage girls were arrested for kidnapping the infant.

The baby’s father, Shahzad Ahmed, received a phone call from the police at 2:30am who informed him that his baby had been found. He rushed to the R.A. Bazaar police station with his wife where a doctor was waiting to conduct a DNA test to confirm the baby was theirs.

“We recognised the woman who kidnapped our son, in an instant, because she had spent hours with us at the hospital, pretending to be an attendant for one of the other patients,” Mr Ahmed said.

The military intelligence (MI) had used footage from the CCTV cameras installed at the hospital to identify the kidnappers and then traced them through the Nadra database. Later, the police was involved to conduct a raid at a house in Bangash Colony, Pirwadhai, where the baby was found with the kidnapper’s family.

The kidnapper is a native of Sukkur and was living with her family in a rented house in Bangash Colony.

Kidnapper said she wanted a male heir

A mother of three daughters, she told the investigators that she hatched the plan to kidnap a baby boy from a hospital because she wanted a male heir.

Her two daughters, who are 15 and 16 years old, accompanied their mother to the hospital and assisted her in kidnapping the baby. The two girls were also arrested by the police. The police have charged the woman, her husband and their daughters with kidnapping.

Sub-Inspector Mohammad Riaz told Dawn the woman’s husband was waiting outside the hospital and also did not inform the police while the baby was at his house so he is also being charged as an accomplice.

The kidnapper and her family celebrated the stolen baby’s ‘Aqeeqa’ (ritualistic animal sacrifice) on Saturday and invited guests. They had also bought gifts, toys and bottles for their new ‘son’.

The baby’s kidnapping from the MH on April 17 drew a lot of media attention and his parents appealed to the army chief and his wife to help them find their missing son.

On Sunday, the baby’s mother, Sehrish Shahzad, was overjoyed to be reunited with her son. “I will never let my baby out of my sight again,” she said.

The family’s home was packed with relatives who had come to celebrate the baby’s reunion with his parents.

“I will now be able to give my son the name ‘Mustafa Ahmed’ which I had thought of when I first saw him,” said the mother.

“I cannot express how happy we are,” said Mohammad Abid Khan, the baby’s uncle.

“We thank the police and our intelligence agencies for reuniting us with our son,” Shahzad Ahmed said.

Published in Dawn, April 27th, 2015

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