PESHAWAR, Nov 25: A couple accused of kidnapping an infant from a hospital has denied the allegations levelled against them by local police and claimed that a six-month-old baby recovered from their house was not the one disappeared from a hospital four months ago.

Speaking at a news conference at the press club here on Saturday, Inayatur Rehman of Muslim Colony said that on Nov 22 a police team, led by DSP Raziq Khan and ASP Qadir, raided their house at about 3pm and took away his wife and the infant.

He said his wife was a health worker in Mohmand Agency and attended delivery and other cases in her house. He said that four months ago an Afghan refugee woman had abandoned her baby in front of their house, and his wife had been looking after the baby since then. “We took care of the baby as our son and we also informed our neighbours about the incident,” he added.

His wife said she knew the mother of her adopted son. She said the woman whose baby had disappeared from the Lady Reading Hospital on June 28 was not the mother of the baby they had adopted.

“Though I have no children but my husband has nine children from his first wife,” she said, adding that the allegation of kidnapping the baby from the hospital was wrong and baseless.

Mr Inayat said he had some dispute with his cousins in his native town Shabqdar who had informed police and the parents of the disappeared baby to involve him in a false case. He said that on Nov 8, his rivals had fired on his vehicle and he had lodged an FIR of the incident with the Paharhipura police.

He said the DNA test of the baby to know who his parents were should be conducted in Islamabad, instead of Lahore.

The couple demanded that the baby should be handed over to them. They said the baby was suffering and if anything happened to him, they would commit self-immolation.