The police investigators working on the case of a newborn baby’s kidnapping from a hospital in Karachi’s District Central have failed to trace the whereabouts of the boy. They have been surprised to discover that all the 32 CCTV cameras installed at the hospital were not functioning during the abduction.
The boy was born on Saturday at the Ahmed Medical Centre, which is located on the main Shahrah-e-Pakistan within the limits of the Gulberg police station. At around 4am the following morning, however, two hitherto unidentified women — one wearing an abaya and the other a white coat — kidnapped the baby from the health facility.
The abducted boy’s father Muhammad Aslam works at a garment factory and lives in the New Karachi area. The kidnapping took place during the time the father was outside the hospital for Sehri.
The mother of the child told the police that while her husband was out, a woman wearing a white coat — like the one that doctors wear — arrived in the room. “I thought she was a doctor or a member of the hospital staff,” said the mother.
“The woman in the white coat examined the baby, and said that he was running a fever, so they will have to shift him to the children’s ward.” Since the woman impersonating a doctor had alarmed the mother by telling her that her baby was running a fever, the mother allowed the woman to take the child out of the room.
Shortly afterwards, other family members arrived at the hospital, and the mother informed them of the situation. When the baby’s father went to the children’s ward, he could not find the boy there, so he started asking the staff about his whereabouts and immediately informed the police as well.
“Interestingly,” said the mother, “all the cameras of the hospital were not functioning at the time of the kidnapping. How is it possible with 32 cameras installed at the health facility?” She suspects the involvement of the hospital staff in the abduction of her baby boy. She has stressed that the hospital management should also be questioned in the matter.After receiving information of the incident, police officials reached the hospital to launch their investigation. They have taken three employees of the health facility into custody for interrogation.
According to SHO Akhtar Aziz, a total of 32 cameras are installed at the hospital, but interestingly, all the cameras are not functioning, so the police are trying to ascertain if they are out of order due to some technical fault or if there has been some foul play.Though the police investigators have been unable to get the security camera footage of the hospital premises, they have obtained the CCTV camera footage of the road outside the health facility. “The CCTV camera footage shows two women arriving in a rickshaw, and the rickshaw being parked outside the hospital,” said SHO Aziz. “After kidnapping the baby boy, the women got into the rickshaw and made their escape.”
The officer said that the faces of the women behind the kidnapping are unclear in the CCTV camera footage, but the police investigators are trying to get more security feeds from the surroundings of the hospital, while the administration of the health facility is also being questioned.
Considering the seriousness of the incident, the investigation of the newborn baby boy’s kidnapping case has been handed over to the Anti-Violent Crime Cell (AVCC).
