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Boys Got Swapped At Birth, Families Want The Hospital To Be Punished But Keep The Babies

byKrishna Tanna
13th January 2018
3 minute read

Stories of babies being intentionally or mistakenly swapped at birth have been witnessed in movies and in some rarely reported cases. Most of the times, the family wants their kin back and resolve the matter in any way they can. After all, blood is thicker than water, or so we are taught. But then there are cases which surprise us and touch our hearts in unexplainable ways.

That’s exactly what this story will do to you. Two baby boys were mistakenly swapped at birth.

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Their families have moved the court and appealed to keep the babies they have been raising so far. As reported by The Indian Express, each boy was born to both the couples on 11 March 2015 at Civic Hospital with a gap of a few minutes.

Sewali Boro and Anil Boro, farmers of Bezpara village in Mangaldoi, and Salima Parbin and Sahabuddin Ahmed, from Sialmari (Shyampur) where Ahmed is a high school teacher, are the distressed parents of Riyan and Jonait.

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Both the couples started suspecting that the boys they brought home were not their own child. In a complete narrative to IE, Ahmed said,

“My wife raised doubts about the baby not being ours within about a week of his birth. While she said that the eyes looked typically tribal, I tried to brush aside her doubts. But as she kept insisting, I went to the Civil Hospital, but the then superintendent said my wife must be suffering from mental illness and advised me to consult a psychiatrist,”
Failing to receive any help from the hospital authorities, he filed an RTI and got hold of the list of women who delivered babies on the same day in the hospital. He found Sewali Boro’s name and decided to go check for himself. However, he experienced cold feet once he reached the Bezpara village. Instead, he wrote to Anil Boro who dismissed his doubts.
Boro invited Ahmed to visit his house the next day and the family obliged. Upon meeting, both families confirmed that the boys indeed were swapped in the hospital. Boro, however, was still against the idea of exchanging her son.

The village authorities then got involved and agreed to the exchange, but also suggested the legal procedures be completed to resolve the matter. He also said,

“I had some doubts from the very beginning. But I had kept it strictly to myself, and it was only when Ahmed wrote to  ME when the baby was three months old that I began to think seriously.”

Ahmed went back to the Superintendent of the Mangaldoi Civic hospital in June 2015, who set up an investigation but dismissed the case after four months.

Determined to resolve this issue, Ahmed himself went for a DNA test with his wife and son, and the lab confirmed no biological link. Ahmed said,

“When I took the DNA report to the hospital, the superintendent said it had no legal validity.”

On moving the high court, the lawyers told him it will take about a decade to get a verdict, while one lawyer demanded he pays the entire fees in advance. He then finally went to the police and got lucky when DySP Hemanta Barua took a personal interest in the case.

In April 2017,  DySP Barua managed to get a DNA test of both parents and both babies.

“The report took its time, and the DySP finally told us on November 27, 2017, that the DNA tests had established that the babies got exchanged immediately after birth. He also advised me to register a case against the hospital in the Mangaldoi district court, which summoned us on January 4.”
When the couples went to the court to exchange the babies legally, the boys, Riyan and Jonait, refused to leave their respective mothers, the one they grew up with. It was then that both the families decided against the exchange.

The Boro couple discussed the matter with Anil’s mother and three brothers. He said,

“All have advised us not to exchange the babies again. We will submit an affidavit on January 24 saying we don’t want to exchange them and will bring them up as our own sons.”

Both the couples have daughters, i.e. both the boys have sisters they have been growing up with. Even the respective sisters do not want to exchange the brothers they know as their own. Ahmed said,

“On January 24, both families will tell the court that we will always remain close relatives.”

Despite resolving their issue and reaching a mutual agreement, the families want the authorities of the hospital to be punished for their negligence, which I think is completely fair.

Riyan and Jonait will grow up with a liberal faith and two loving families. Isn’t it such a heart-warming story? *wipes the tears from my face*

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