Nine women claim ‘Baby 81’ in tsunami-hit Sri Lanka

COLOMBO: Nine different women are claiming an infant boy called “Baby 81” who was brought to a hospital in eastern Sri Lanka on the day of the tsunami last month, hospital officials said yesterday. The boy, whose real name was not known, was taken to Kalmunai Base Hospital on December 26 covered with bruises and mud, Dr KR Saseenthirian said. The child, who was alone, was the 81st admission of the day. “Parents who have lost their children come everyday to the hospital to check,” Saseenthirian said in a telephone interview. “Some go back, and some stay and claim that the baby is theirs.”

Hospital officials said nine women have claimed the baby. The women have quarrelled with each other and one has threatened to commit suicide if she is not given the boy, a hospital official said on condition of anonymity. “Most of the parents who came and claimed that this is their baby are really believing that this is their baby. Maybe they are not lying. Because they have lost a baby of the same age and all the babies they look at, look like their own child,” Dr K Muhunthan, a consultant obstetrician, told Sky TV. Hospital authorities asked police to investigate after some parents became violent, Saseenthirian said.

No one was injured, but one woman threatened to kill a doctor if the baby was not given to her, hospital officials said. “Now it will have to be a court decision. If the court asks us to conduct DNA tests, we will do that,” Saseenthirian said. But he said the tests are expensive and it was unclear who would pay. Children accounted for a staggering 40 percent, or 12,000 of Sri Lanka’s tsunami death toll of nearly 31,000. UNICEF says preliminary data indicate that nearly 1,000 children were orphaned by the tsunami in the country and another 3,200 lost one parent. Kalmunai is a city along the eastern coast populated by Muslims and Tamils.