LAHORE: Police recovered a newborn baby who was kidnapped from the Lahore General Hospital (LGH) on June 4 and arrested three persons, including a woman, for committing the crime.

The baby boy was handed over to his mother at the office of Lahore Investigation SSP Imran Kishwar on Thursday.

The suspects were identified as Fauzia, her husband Hafeez Aurangzeb and his friend Subhan.

The suspects had taken away the baby from the hospital early morning on June 4 when Fauzia approached his (baby’s) father, Imran, and requested him to hand his newborn son over to her for a few minutes as she was issueless and just wanted to ‘play with the newborn’.

Imran’s wife had delivered the baby through C-Section at the LGH.

Sharing details of the incident, Model Town investigation SP Zain Asim told Dawn Hafeez had reached outside the hospital along with his friend, Subhan, while his wife, Fauzia, went inside the hospital. All three suspects were in touch with one another on mobile phones and when Fauzia got a chance, she left the hospital along with the baby and hired a rickshaw to escape. The other suspects were on a motorcycle without a registration number plate to dodge police after kidnapping the baby.

Mr Asim said the couple was resident of the Bedian Road and they had successfully deceived police by changing locations frequently. Police obtained the record of 8,000 calls made before and after the kidnap of the baby. Dozens of CCTV cameras of the Punjab Safe City Authority and private buildings also helped police reach the kidnappers who had used various narrow streets, intersections, localities and roads to reach their home on the Bedian Road. The distance from the LGH to their home was around 25 to 30km.

Police first managed to get an important clue to Subhan by tracing a suspected call record. They traced the location of Subhan, a worker of a factory near Chungi Amar Sidhu.

Mr Asim said it was a tough job to identify the suspect as the factory was housing more than 10,000 employees and police had no facial recognition of Subhan except his call record. Police spent a night there and traced and arrested the suspect from the flat of the factory. During interrogation, he revealed details of the couple.

“A police team raided the couple’s house on Bedian Road, arrested them and recovered the baby,” the SP said.

Police investigators said the woman suspect was stated to be infertile and she claimed to have kidnapped the baby to satisfy his family and other relatives, according to police.

It was the third attempt of the suspects to kidnap a baby from the LGH gynae wards.

Police claimed Hafeez was a notorious criminal and he was involved in eight robberies and street crime incidents.

Published in Dawn,June 10th, 2022