Authorities have revealed that a newborn baby has been returned to her parents nine days after being kidnapped from a hospital in Pakistan. Keep reading for the full story!
A newborn baby girl has finally been reunited with her worried parents nine days after she was kidnapped from a busy hospital in Pakistan. According to Pakistan Today, police announced on Monday that they had arrested five suspects connected to the chilling abduction, including three women.
Authorities say the newborn daughter of Hassan Nadeem of Daroghawala was kidnapped on December 8 almost immediately after his wife had given birth at Lahore Services Hospital. Reports show that the baby girl was given to her family in the maternity ward for a brief period of time, but a woman posing as a hospital worker then took the newborn back from them, claiming that the infant was in need of a quick check-up.
Investigators reportedly realized something terrible had happened when the hospital worker who had originally given the baby to the family was told that the newborn had been handed off to an employee she did not know. Medical Superintendent Dr. Ameer Husain immediately put together a three-member committee to investigate the matter, while Capital City Police Officer retired Capt Amin Wains and his team began searching for the missing baby girl.
Once the baby was finally found safe nearly 10 days later, Crime Record Officer Superintendent of Police (SP) Syed Abdul Raheem Sherazi revealed that at least some of the kidnappers had been caught on CCTV footage escaping with the missing baby.
Sherazi has since explained that the abduction was carried out by an organized gang that had been planning raids at various hospitals, though it remains unclear if any other babies were actually kidnapped. Since the arrests were made, police have identified the five suspects in question as Kiran Kashif, Shazia Wazir, Iram Rasheed, Muzamil Zameer, and Shaukat Ali. Specialised Healthcare and Medical Education Secretary Najam Ahmed Shah, meanwhile, is now demanding that hospitals around Pakistan strengthen their security protocols to prevent something this serious from happening again.
While these five kidnapping suspects have since been caught, people are warning hospital staff to keep an eye on the individuals coming and going from their facilities, just to be safe. This isn’t the first time a baby has been kidnapped from a hospital without officials noticing until it’s too late. As previously reported, Stephanie L. Belden, a 35-year-old mom in California, was arrested after she abducted her own newborn from a hospital in Fresno. Belden reportedly cut off the baby’s hospital bracelet and hid her in a duffel bag to prevent child services from taking custody of the newborn.
“The biological mother wasn’t very happy with that, went back up, made her way into the maternity ward and cut off the alarm bracelet off the newborn baby –put the newborn baby in a duffel bag, and walked out of the hospital,” Fresno Police Lt. Jay Struble told KFSN at the time.
Authorities later revealed that the baby had been taken from Belden’s custody after she tested positive for meth at birth. Fortunately for the newborn baby girl, authorities tracked down Belden within 30 minutes, arrested her, and returned her infant to the hospital.