KARACHI: Three women, including a trainee nurse of the National Institute of Child Health, were on Monday sent to prison on judicial remand in the newborn boy kidnapping case.

Judicial Magistrate (south) Mumtaz Solangi also remanded a male suspect, Akbar Awan, in police custody till Nov 16 in the same case.

Four suspects — trainee nurse Sobia Saleem, Gul Noor Bibi, Farzana and her husband Akbar Awan — have been arrested for their involvement in the kidnapping of a newborn boy from the NICH.

The police produced the suspects in court and sought their remand.

However, the court sent the female suspects to jail till Nov 27 and remanded suspect Awan in police custody till Nov 16.

The police told the court that the newborn boy was abducted from the NICH on Nov 4 and after repeatedly examining the CCTV footage the police got some clues about the involvement of a trainee nurse and questioned her.

She disclosed that she with the help Gul Noor had abducted the newborn boy and handed him over to a childless couple, residing in Model Colony, against the sum of Rs30,000.

The police raided the residence of the couple on Nov 13 and recovered the boy. The police also arrested the trainee nurse and the couple and were looking for a fourth suspect, Ms Noor, who had acted as a go-between. On Monday, the police arrested Ms Noor.

According to the police, she had only ‘made arrangements for’ the baby and ‘mediated between the two sides on humanitarian grounds’.

The couple and the trainee nurse were not known to each other. Ms Noor lived in the same area where the couple had been settled for years and she had acted as a go-between, they added.

A case (FIR 338/2011) was registered under Sections 363 (punishment for kidnapping) and 34 (common intention) of the Pakistan Penal Code on a complaint of the boy’s father, Rahib Ali, at the Saddar police station.

‘Police action was beyond expectations’The victim’s father told Dawn that he never lost hope but the way the police detected the culprits and recovered the kidnapped boy was beyond his expectations.

“I must admit that I never had a good opinion about our police force but I now realise that no crime can stay undetected if they take their task sincerely.”

Mr Ali, a clerk in the education department who lived in a government quarter near Cantt Railway Station, said that like him the police were sure that someone inside the hospital was involved in the kidnapping of his newborn son.

“I feel sympathy for the couple who adopted my son only to have a child, but they also took part in the crime to some extent as they did not bother to verify where the child was coming from,” he added.

The jubilant family of Rahib Ali’s named their only son, who born after two daughters, Abdul Ghani.

They hoped that the boy would become a police officer when he grew up.