A six-month-old girl was today allegedly kidnapped while her mother was caught up in a queue to give the blood sample of her elder daughter at Hindu Rao Hospital in Delhi.
The infant, who went missing around 8.15 AM from the hospital, however, was rescued from a bus stand near Model Town police station around 3.30 PM, a senior police officer said.
The girl, identified as Atifa, was taken by her mother Rehana to the hospital where she had gone for the blood test of her elder daughter.
While she was busy with formalities of the test, she had handed over Atifa to an unidentified woman, who later vanished from the spot with the infant.
"Since Atifa was crying, the laboratory assistant suggested her mother to hand over the child to the woman who was in front of her. Within a few minutes of giving her child to that person, she found that her daughter and that woman were missing," Additional DCP-I (North) Esha Pandey said.
In her complaint, Rehana has alleged that the hospital didn't take quick action when she raised a hue and cry about her missing daughter and only made a PCR call at 8.59 am, the officer said.
Police earlier said the CCTV cameras in the hospital were "not functioning" and they could not get any footage for clues to track the baby, a charge denied by North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) which runs the hospital.
According to Rehana, the woman who kidnapped her daughter was wearing a red bindi and a huge nose pin.
A woman came to the Model Town Police Station and told the cops that she had seen the girl crying at the bus stand and handed over the infant to them, a senior police officer said.
Police is on the lookout for the woman who had kidnapped the child. "We had flashed the information with the details of the woman and the child at all metro stations, railway stations, ISBT and all PCR vans across the city.
"We have informed various motor and foot-patrolling teams to look out for all women of the same profile," the officer said, adding, police is scanning the data of all the visitors to the hospital since this morning.
North Delhi Mayor Sanjeev Nayyar said the infant was kidnapped from the hospital but claimed the CCTV cameras there were functional.
"Our knowledge is that the CCTV cameras at the hospital are functional," he said.
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