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Interchanged at birth, families refuse to swap babies!

By Correspondent

MANGALDAI, Jan 25 - In a rare case, after a couple of years, parents got to know that their babies born within 5 minutes of each other accidentally switched at birth in the hospital.

They are from very different backgrounds. One set of parents is tribal Hindu, the other Muslim.

Now the twist is � after a long battle with the authorities, the DNA tests finally came through two years and nine months later... and the babies refused to leave the parents who have raised them.

On Wednesday, the couples moved to the court of Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate, Mangaldai, to confirm that they would bring up each other�s children.

This is the story of two couples � one couple is a resident of a village under Shyampur Police Station in Darrang district belonging to Muslim community and the other couple belonging to Bodo community following Hindu religion from a village under Mangaldai Police Station in Darrang district who have shown that the humanity is above all religion, faith, law and even the blood relation.

The court, considering their prayer and keeping in mind the mental and physical states of both the children, has allowed the parents to keep the two children as before with necessary care and protection. This was stated by Bhabendra Nath Sarma, Assistant Public Prosecutor and Jiaur Rahman, counsel of the petitioner couples. The court also decided to leave the matter of legal guardianship to the higher court of its jurisdiction in due course of time, they added.

The incident reportedly first came to light on January 4 last on the court campus when the two sets of parents unanimously and without any hesitation refused to get separated from their babies of the other pair of parents following a DNA test report that both the babies had been interchanged by mistakes in the hospital during their birth.

The court, based on the DNA report, directed the authorities concerned to hand over the babies each to their biological parents. But the court witnessed an unprecedented emotional moments with both the mothers were not in a situation to separate themselves from the babies they had taken care of since their birth.

It needs to be mentioned here that it was the fateful day of March 11, 2015, two expectant mothers belonging to two different religions were admitted to the Mangaldai Civil Hospital in the early hours. They are Anowara Khatun (name changed) of a village under Shyampur Police Station and Anita Bodo (name changed) of a village under Mangaldai Police Station.

Both the mothers normally attained the divine motherhood with a son each in the Mangaldai Civil Hospital early in the morning reportedly at a difference of just five minutes and were duly discharged from the hospital two days later.

But after a few days, Anowara observed some unfamiliar facial look of her son and immediately expressed her doubt on the real identity of her son as the hospital authorities might have done some mistakes in handing over the children to the real mothers. Though her husband initially tried to console his wife not to worry over it, later he also developed some doubts and approached the hospital authorities. However, he was denied with any satisfactory response by the hospital authorities.

Later, he collected the official data on the list of the births that had taken place through a RTI petition. On the basis of that information, he subsequently lodged an FIR at Mangaldai Police Station and the police registered a case in this regard. The police, while investigating the matter, sent blood samples of both the sets of parents and babies for the DNA test first to the Central Forensic Science Laboratory, Kolkata. But on being rejected there, the blood samples were sent to Regional Forensic Centre in Guwahati.

The DNA reports of the Forensic centre, which were received by the police on November 27, 2017, here finally proved that the two babies were interchanged.

After getting the DNA reports, the additional chief judicial magistrate summoned both the families to the court on January 4 and directed the authorities concerned to hand over both the children to their biological parents.

But both the children refused to accept their biological mothers as their own mothers and started crying in the court denying their separation with their foster mothers.

The additional chief judicial magistrate then allowed both the children to go with their foster mothers instead of their biological mothers reportedly fixing January 24 as the date for submission of affidavits by both the sets of parents in this regard.

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