ANOTHER newborn baby has been abducted from a ward of Dhaka Medical College Hospital. It was known from various media reports that after giving birth to a twin on Wednesday the mother and her babies were shifted to Ward No. 213 of the hospital. As the young mother had difficulty in managing the twin an unknown woman came forward and offered her help. The mother did not doubt about that woman’s intention and gave her a baby to look after.
But after a few minutes when the mother wanted to feed that baby she found neither her son nor that woman. By that time the woman had fled with the one-day-old baby. The shocked mother has been weeping since then. On the other hand the DMCH authority has formed an enquiry committee and the police have started their investigation. But the abducted baby could not be recovered till Friday evening.
The country seems to become free for all kinds of crime. This was not the only incident of child abduction. In fact, child abduction has become a frequent phenomenon there. We must say that the authority cannot skip their responsibilities by just forming an enquiry committee. They should rather try to find out and arrest the people behind it, which is not an impossible task at all. Take the incident of Wednesday for instance. It happened in broad daylight but there was no electricity in the corridor during those fatal minutes and hence the closed circuit camera failed to catch the woman’s photo.
The role of the ward’s guard on duty was not only mysterious but questionable also. He was absent for about 20 minutes during the same fatal moments and there was not any security persons at the western gate of the hospital. If anybody starts from the lightless corridor and does not find the ward’s guard on duty and ends at the western gate, where too was not a single security person, it will be established beyond doubt that everything was planned, arranged and executed meticulously.
This is not possible for one or two persons rather there must be an active gang behind all abductions. We have always called upon the government and the DMCH authority to find those offenders and take punitive actions against them. Such appeals made in past went unheeded – unless there is accountability at the top and the criminals are protected as government party supporters, the people will have no safety either for them or for their children.
