Newborn kidnapped from hospital traced, couple held in Amritsar

PK Jaiswar

Amritsar, October 23

Two weeks after a newly born boy was kidnapped from Guru Nanak Dev Hospital here, the police have arrested the prime suspects and recovered the boy who was later handed over to his parents, Harpreet Singh and Baljit Kaur of Jhabal.

The woman, who kidnapped the boy, was identified as Sarabjit Kaur alias Babbu and her husband Bunty Masih of Harimabad village in Gurdaspur. They were held from Ludhiana bus stand last night.

Till now, the police have arrested six persons including three women in the case. Earlier, the police nabbed James Masih and his friend Karan Kumar of Sagarpur village in Batala, Raj of Harimabad and Suman of Kale Nangal village. James is the brother-in-law (sister’s husband) of the prime accused Babbu while Raj is the mother of Bunty Masih. Suman was a friend of Babbu.

Varinder Singh Khosa, Assistant Commissioner of Police (North), said that Raj had refused to keep them when they returned after kidnapping the boy and the accused stayed with Suman for a couple of days. As they did not inform the police about this, they were also arrested in the case, he added.

Yesterday, the police got the information about the accused couple’s presence in Ludhiana. With the help of local police, the duo was arrested from Ludhiana bus stand and brought to Amritsar.

The complainant Harpreet Singh had told the police that on October 6, his wife gave birth to a baby boy after 14 years of marriage. Two days later, an unknown woman who had befriended the family in the hospital premises, kidnapped the boy when they were sleeping outside the ward.

Khosa said that during preliminary investigations with the help of CCTV footage, the police identified James Masih and his friend Karan Kumar, who were arrested on October 9. Later on October 13, the police arrested Raj and Suman, but Babbu and her husband Bunty were evading arrest as they were repeatedly changing their locations. During the interrogation, Babbu said that in 2013, she was married to Jodha of Gurdaspur and they had two children from that marriage. In 2022, she entered into a live-in relationship with Bunty Masih without divorcing her first husband, she said.

“As she was operated upon for permanent birth control, she could not give birth to a child while Bunty insisted on having a child. This prompted the couple to kidnap the newly born child from GNDH. They did a recce of the hospital for several days before targeting the family to kidnap the child,” said Khosa. He said the duo was produced in the court and brought on police remand for further investigations.