Only three Punjab districts offer hope for abandoned infants

But hope floats. According to Amritsar Deputy Commissioner KS Pannu,20 of the 30 infants who were saved through the ‘panghura’ project at Amritsar have been adopted. In the three districts,the abandoned infants are given medical care and then taken to licensed adoption placement agencies in the state.

Pannu was the first to initiate the project in Amritsar. “The project is the brainchild of my wife Mandhir Kaur,who urged that we must have a system to save such infants,” he told The Indian Express. The panghura and the supporting infrastructure was set up at the Red Cross Bhawan,in collaboration with District Red Cross Society (DRCS).

Talking to The Indian Express,Mandhir Kaur said she was pained by reports of abandoned infants found dead at various places. “Such children are brought to us even now. In November,a girl child with severe pneumonia and jaundice was brought from Manawala near Amritsar. She was left in the bushes without adequate clothing. It was after four days that her condition became stable,” said Kaur.

Secretary DRCS Balwant Singh said the Panghura project at Amritsar received eight infants in 2008,six in 2009,and 16 in 2010.

At Bathinda,the project was initiated in February 2009 by the then Deputy Commissioner Rahul Tiwari. After Tiwari became DC Ludhiana in 2010,he started the project here too. “Abandoning an infant is a crime. But if somebody decides to do it,at least the infant should be saved,” Tiwari told The Indian Express.

A Panghura project in Bathinda was set up at MGD School for Deaf and Dumb Children,run by the DRCS Bathinda. Secretary of the Society JR Goyal said that when approximately Rs 1.5 lakh were invested in creating the infrastructure for the project,he wondered whether it was required. “The first year,we received no infant. But in 2010,we received five infants,four of them girls. All these would otherwise have been left to die. Now I know that our investment was right,” he admitted.

AK Sharma,Secretary DRCS Ludhiana,said the Panghura Ghar in Bal Bhawan,Sarabha Nagar,received four girls last year. One of them was a year-and-a-half old. Said Karamjeet Kaur,the Warden here,“There are people who long to have a baby. It breaks my heart to see these little ones abandoned. Thankfully,we are now able to save these innocent infants,” she said.