The baby girl from north Chennai’s Pulianthope who was stillborn in the midst of floods was finally laid to rest on Sunday, December 10. The child’s mother, Sowmya, had gone into preterm labour on December 5, but her husband and relatives had not been able to get her to a hospital on time as the whole neighbourhood was heavily inundated. TNM had reported that the child’s father, Masood, had tried desperately to find an ambulance to take his wife to the hospital, but it had proved impossible.
The family’s grief and horror continued even after the stillborn was delivered. Without any means to sever the umbilical cord nor any way to bring an ambulance home, neighbours pitched in to take the mother and child by cycle rickshaw to G3 hospital. On arrival at G3, they found the gates locked and no one within responded. When they tried at Muthu Hospital next, doctors initially refused but finally administered treatment to the mother after police intervened.
Despite the distress the family has been in since these traumatic events, staff at the Kilpauk Medical College and Hospital (KMC) insisted on a payment of Rs 2,500 to cremate the child. TNM reported this too. Masood said that the hospital staff members told him that if he could not make the payment, he should take away his daughter’s body. Masood told earlier told TNM that he had no financial means to bury the baby himself nor to pay the hospital for the cremation and neither did he know the condition of the baby’s body in the mortuary, four days after her death.
After the intervention of the Tamil Nadu Muslim Munnetra Kazhagam (TMMK), Masood and his family were able to bury the baby on December 10. Even at this point, KMC did not show any empathy to the family. The child’s body was returned in just a cardboard box, without even a shroud wrapped around it first. When the family opened the box at the burial ground, they were shocked and were forced to send someone to buy a white shroud to wrap the baby girl’s body as per Islamic custom.
Watch: ‘I don’t have money to bury my baby’: A desperate father affected by Chennai floods speaks
Watch: Chennai floods: Baby dies after pregnant woman fails to get medical help