Baby abducted from Tamil Nadu's Pollachi Government Hospital rescued in 22 hours

COIMBATORE: A day after a five-day-old girl was abducted from the maternity ward of the Pollachi Government Hospital, the Coimbatore (Rural) Police rescued her from Kerala on Monday morning. The baby was handed over to her mother, Y Dhivyabharathi, around 3 am and she burst into tears.

H Shameena (34) of Koduvayur in Palakkad and a minor girl were arrested in connection with the case. Shameena separated from her husband and was in a relationship with another man. She stole the baby tell her lover that it was theirs, the police said.

They were identified and traced using CCTV camera footage. Divyabharathi was admitted to the hospital on June 27 and gave birth to the baby two days later. The baby was abducted in the wee hours of Sunday.

Twelve special teams checked CCTV visuals and identified the suspects when they got down from an autorickshaw at the Pollachi bus stand. From there, they took a bus to Coimbatore railway station and a train to Palakkad and reached home in an autorickshaw, police said.

According to the police, Shameena, who has three children, separated from her husband a few years ago and was in a relationship with Manikandan. Shameena allegedly lied to Manikandan about being pregnant after the latter wanted to have a child. "The special teams examined visuals from nearly 250 surveillance cameras. The mission was accomplished within 22 hours," said SP V Badri Narayanan.

Meanwhile, officials of the GH requested police to set up an additional outpost on their new premises from where a baby was abducted. Bout senior officers said that setting up a new outpost is not possible due to a shortage of workforce. The hospital authorities started installing CCTV cameras on Sunday.