KASUR: Police have yet to find any clue to the woman who took away a newborn baby on Wednesday from the gynecology ward of the Kasur District Headquarters Hospital as surveillance cameras installed at the hospital have been out of order for the last many months.

The newborn baby is still missing.

The hospital administration has formed a committee to probe into the matter. The Kasur Saddar police also lodged a first information report against unidentified accused without any clue so far.

According to complainant Pervez Masih, of Kot Ghulam Muhammad locality, father of Alia Bibi, an unidentified woman in the guise of staff nurse took away the newborn from her niece, Razia Bibi, for blood samples on Wednesday. The police registered a case and started investigation.

A hospital official on the condition of anonymity said that CCTV cameras had been out of order for the last several months.

The Kasur hospital has been under spotlight during the tenure of Shahbaz Sharif as chief minister who visited the facility several times. His successor, Usman Buzdar, also visited Kasur soon after becoming chief minister.

Later, the hospital was in the limelight after a video went viral showing the presence of a dog in the newly-constructed intensive care unit (ICU). Provincial Health Minister Yasmin Rashid instituted an inquiry that could not be concluded.

When an inquiry officer from Lahore visited the hospital some days after the incident, the dog was still there in the ICU.

Separately, the Allahabad police found a newborn baby at an abandoned place near a private textile mills on Kasur-Allahabad Road late on Wednesday and handed her over to the Child Protection Bureau on Thursday.

The district administration has yet to find any link between the missing baby from the Hospital and recovered baby in Allahabad.

WWF: The district administration would help the Punjab Wildlife and Parks Department and WWF-Pakistan for the restoration and preservation of critically endangered white backed vulture being kept at ‘vulture breeding centre’ located at Changa Manga in Kasur.

This was stated by Deputy Commissioner Azhar Hayat in a meeting with the tehsil Chunian administration on Thursday at Changa Manga Rest House. He also said the tehsil administration would also strive to make Changa Manga recreational park more attractive for the tourists.

The DC said that plantation would be done on about 600 acres of forest land that had been recently retrieved from the illegal occupant. He also applauded the expulsion of about 10,000 cattle heads from the forest and the step would help to restore the forest.

Mr Hayat added that no stone would be left unturned in protecting the wildlife and a strict action would be taken against the violators.

Published in Dawn, May 17th, 2019