BENGALURU: Since 2013, at least 320 newborn babies have been abandoned across the city by their parents. In most cases, the police have been unable to locate the biological parents and many of these babies have died, or have been turned to a life of begging or prostitution or worse yet, have had their organs harvested and sold. Consider this, the last time a case of an abandoned baby was solved by the police was three years back, in 2016. Between then and now, 115 more such unwanted babies have been left on city streets to fend for themselves.
According to the police, newborn boys and girls are abandoned at the roadside, near garbage dumps, at temples, railway stations and bus stands in the city. Those who end up being left at railway stations and bus stands are the most vulnerable as they could end up in the clutches of human traffickers, who then use these babies for begging and later force them into the flesh trade, police sources explained.
The relatively luckier ones, when found alive, are rushed to the hospital by the police and then brought to the notice of the Child Welfare Committee to be sent to a Government Children Home for the first six years of their lives. During these years, the police try their best to locate the parents, but the problem lies here.
A severe manpower shortage, rising crime rates, overworked personnel and frequent deputation on VVIP duties have the police gasping for breath, leaving them with precious little time to deal with abandoned babies. “We are not shying away from our work. The jurisdictional police do try to find the parents of the babies/infants, but in many cases the mother delivers the baby in a different city, town or village, and then comes to Bengaluru to abandon the baby and go back. So, it is very difficult to trace them,” said Additional Commissioner of Police (East), Seemanth Kumar Singh.
In fact, even if they do manage to zero down on a few suspects, there is no way for the police to prove that they are indeed the parents of the child. While a DNA test can identify the parents, Singh said. “First we have to find the suspected parent. In many cases, babies born out of wedlock, are abandoned due to social stigma. Residents of Bengaluru abandoning babies is quite rare.”
Another officer explained that in the absence of clues, cases are closed within a few months of investigations. “We just have to say that we were unable to trace the parents. Babies are abandoned due to being born as a result of illicit affairs or out of wedlock. In some cases, the baby is abandoned only because it is a girl child. Many people also say that financial problems force the parents to do this but we have seen very less cases like this. I have seen mothers who earn Rs. 300 a day determinedly take care of six children.”
Meanwhile, in the absence of a concerted effort involving other departments, the police have no option but to continue the current practise, they say. “We only register the case and leave the babies in the children’s home. Sadly, we are so overworked that we barely have time to see our own children. There is very little investigation into these cases,” the officer told The New Indian Express.
Vasudev Sharma, Executive Director, Child Right Trust said, “There are two main reasons for abandoning babies: one is unwed pregnancy, that our society will not accept at any cost. The other reason is men cheating women. No doctor takes the risk of aborting a baby after 15 or 20 weeks of pregnancy, so the mother will wait till she gives birth and abandons the baby.”