A female doctor who abducted a newborn boy from a hospital and sold him to another couple in return for money has been arrested.
Dr. Rashmi Shashikumar was arrested on Sunday, May 30, from the city of Bengaluru in India.
She was employed as a psychiatrist at a private hospital. She is accused of kidnapping an infant boy from the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) maternity home in Chamarajpet last year.
The doctor allegedly kidnapped the infant and sold him to a couple who had been consulting her for seven to eight years, The News Minute reported.
The accused doctor was reportedly helping the couple deal with their differently-abled child. The mother had expressed her desire for another baby but couldn’t conceive due to health issues.
The accused suggested the couple should opt for surrogacy and lied to them that she can arrange a surrogate mother. She later told the couple that the due date was on May 28, 2020.
As the due date approached, the doctor began frantically visiting different medical facilities in the city in search of a surrogate mother, but all in vain.
The accused finally went to the maternity home in Chamarajpet and fled with a baby boy through the back gate.
The infant’s parents, Husna Banu and Naveed, alerted the police after their relative discovered that the newborn was missing.
Harish Pandey, Deputy Commissioner of Police, South Zone, said a 20 member team was formed to investigate the missing case.
The investigation team made a list of possible suspects that included the accused doctor. The investigators grew more suspicious of her after she caused a delay in recording her statement.
The officer said the accused was traced after investigating her phone calls. She confessed to her crime during the interrogation, police said.
“The accused was traced after a thorough analysis of phone calls and the CCTV footage which we had collected from the hospital premises," the officer told The New Indian Express.
According to the police, the doctor allegedly sold the infant for Rs 16 lakh (21,902 USD approx). The doctor reportedly used the money to repay her loans.
The couple who received the infant were unaware of the doctor’s alleged crime, police said. The doctor even produced fake medical records of the surrogate mother to make them believe.
The baby boy will be handed over to his birth parents after all the formalities are completed, authorities said.
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