“Hopes are raised and, after some time, they are dashed,” exclaimed a division bench of Justice Bilal Nazki and Justice A R Joshi. This is the second time that the couple was let down after the DNA tests conducted on another baby found on a Bandra suburban train earlier had also returned a negative result.
The court has now directed director-general of police S S Virk to personally supervise the investigations to trace the missing baby. “We have legitimate expectations from the DGP,” the judges remarked, expressing hope that the child would be found.
Mohan and Mohini Nerurkar’s three-day-old son was kidnapped by an unidentified woman on 1 January 2009 from the maternity ward of Sion Hospital. The couple had filed a habeas corpus petition claiming that cops were not serious about finding their child. The high court had ordered the BMC to pay Rs 5 lakh as interim compensation to the couple.
Cops have been filing regular updates on the orders of the court but investigations have yielded no result so far. The police initially informed the court that they were investigating a woman who they suspected to be the kidnapper. Subsequently, the police had shifted the focus to tracing the baby. As the Nerurkars had seen their child when he was a new born baby, the police found that they were unable to positively identify the eight or nine month old abandoned kids who were shown to the couple. The latest DNA test on an abandoned baby who was kept at a shelter in Vile Parle, came back with the report that the Nerurkars’ were not the biological parents. The court has asked the DGP to make further efforts to find the baby and file a report in 10 days.
