RAWALPINDI: When Shehzad Ali and his wife Sehrish found out they were expecting a baby, they began saving money for hospital expenses.

“We saved for six months so our baby could be delivered at the Military Hospital, which we considered to be the best. We could have never imagined our baby boy would be stolen from this hospital,” Sehrish Ali said.

On Monday, the distraught mother, whose newborn baby was stolen from the Military Hospital on April 17, was discharged from the hospital without her child.

The staff at the hospital told the family, they needed the bed for other patients.

“When Sehrish sees other newborn babies at the hospital, she becomes hysterical with grief,” Abid Ali, Ms Ali’s brother-in-law, told Dawn.

When Sehrish Ali held her son for the first time, she decided to name him Mustafa Ahmed. However, she did not even get a chance to share the baby’s name with her family, before he was kidnapped by a woman who remains at large.

Ms Ali told Dawn that the hospital administration was not sharing any information with her husband and her regarding the investigation.

“I want to appeal to the Chief of Army Staff General Raheel Sharif and his wife to help a poor mother whose baby has been taken from a Military Hospital which is supposed to be well protected,” she said.

She said her baby was lying next to her on a bed in the labour room when a woman walked inside and picked him up, claiming his aunt had asked her to bring him outside.

“It took us five minutes to realise something was wrong. We panicked and ran after the woman but she had disappeared with our baby,” her husband added.

Shahzad Ali said they could not understand how this woman had managed to access the labour room, when even the women of their family were not allowed inside by the security guards.

He described the woman as healthy, with fair skin and of average height.

“She must have been between 35 and 40,” he said.

Since security at the hospital is tight and everyone entering the labour room and the gynaecology ward is subjected to a rigorous security check, the police assumed the woman who stole the child could be a hospital staff member.

The police investigating officer (IO) told Dawn, even though the hospital administration is not allowing the police to interrogate their staff members, the police are continuing the investigation.

“The involvement of hospital staff cannot be ruled out,” he said.

He added the kidnapper’s photograph, which was shared with the police by the hospital administration, was helping the police locate her.

The IO said a case was registered against the woman and the police are making all efforts to unite the baby with his parents.

Published in Dawn, April 22nd, 2015

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