Fearing abandonment, woman lifted baby in Salem

A victim of circumstances right from her childhood, the woman took the baby to cover up her act of hiding her abortion in the fear of losing her family. She was reunited with her in-laws after several rounds of counselling.

General Secretary of YWCA, Salem, and Juvenile Justice Board member Ruby Thiagarajan who was counselling the woman, said that she had lost her father when she was a three-month-old infant and her mother when she was just six months old. 

Raised by her maternal uncle she studied only till Class 5. The girl then worked as a child labourer in textile mills and became a victim of child marriage on her 16th year. She was married to a man from another community and became pregnant in February this year. However, the foetus got aborted in little more than three months. 

“Fearing that she might lose her family if they came to know about it, she started pretending to be pregnant by carrying a bundle of clothes tied to her waist. She managed to hide this from her husband too,” Ruby told DTNext. On October 26, she stole the new-born male baby of Indhu (23) from the Salem Government Hospital in the temporary absence of her mother and caretaker. The same time she went missing from her husband’s place for a day and returned home with the baby. “She told her husband and inlaws that she had gone to a temple where she had labour pain and delivered the baby with the help of a few women who were there,” said the counsellor. 

“She took good care of the baby for five days, till the police came in search of the baby to her village. Repenting her rash act, she returned the baby to the police and cooperated in the inquiry,” Ruby added. Police released her on station bail as her intention was not to steal the baby for selling. However, her husband, in-laws and her maternal uncle refused to accept her back in the family as she was caught by the police for stealing the baby. 

The woman was then taken to the YWCA for temporary shelter. Repeated counselling by YWCA and the police for her and in-laws turned out to be fruitful as her husband finally gave it in writing that he will accept her. But he wanted a few days for the issue to settle in his village before she could return to his house, as the baby theft has become a hot topic among the villagers. So, she was sent with her maternal uncle on Friday night.