Among the dead, a day-old baby born after two losses

For Sharma, who runs a small online business, and his wife Jyoti, their baby was more precious than anything else in the world. He was born after two previous losses – one had died at birth and another because of miscarriage.

“We were very happy because this time, we were hopeful that the baby will live. He had a problem with breathing. The doctor had said that he will be fine in a few days,” Vinod Sharma said. “We didn’t know that the hospital would kill him.”

The Sharmas were yet to finalise their baby’s name.

The compound of the mortuary at the Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital was crowded. Two policemen are talking to a few men, recording their statements. They were fathers, uncles, grandfathers and even neighbours of the seven babies who were killed in the fire, 2 km away.

They babies were only identified by the names of their mothers in the hospital registry. Most of the mothers don’t know yet about the fire. They were not told by their families because “the pain is excructiating” and “there are no words to tell”.

“What would I tell my wife? She won’t be able to bear the pain. When I heard about the fire, I rushed to the hospital,” Sharma said. “No one told us. I saw the news about the fire on television in the morning and panicked.”

The baby, he said, was born in Lok Priya Hospital in Vivek Vihar and was referred to the private neonatal facility. “We thought that my wife would get better care here. The child was born on Friday. We brought him to (the private neonatal place) Vivek Vihar early on Saturday. He was admitted around 5 am,” he said.

Sharma and his wife live along with his parents and an older brother, Amit, 37, in Jwala Nagar neighbourhood.

Amit said they made phone calls when the brothers left home in the morning to reach the neonatal hospital. They learnt that the babies were already shifted to GTB Hospital. “We were hoping that our baby was alive,” Amit said. “Once we reached the (GTB) hospital, they told us to go to the mortuary.”

Amit said the neonatal hospital did not allow anybody from the family to stay back overnight and attend to the babies. “They would only allow us to visit the baby between 1 pm and 4 pm. They told us that the hospital staff will take good care,” he said. “We didn’t know anything about this hospital. We had trusted the doctor who referred us to it.”

The family had planned a puja once the baby was discharged. “We were planning to distribute sweets. We were very happy,” said Vinod. “That fire in the hospital has taken away everything from us. Who will bring our baby back. Perhaps a child is not in our naseeb (fate).”

Later a group of women from Vinod’s family arrived at the hospital. “We want a DNA test. This baby may not be ours,” a woman member shouted. “No one from the hospital informed us about the fire. We don’t know whether the baby they have kept in the mortuary is ours or not.”

Shahnaz Khatoon, 62, too arrived from Bhajanpura in North East Delhi. Her grandson was five days old. She had part of her face covered with a white dupatta, her eyes swollen with tears. “If we knew our child would be killed by this hospital, we would have never come here. We were expecting him to be discharged in two days. We didn’t know we would take his body home,” she said.

She was accompanied by her son Masih Aalam, whose baby died in the fire. But he didn’t want to talk.

Hritik Choudhary, the uncle of another newborn who has lost his life, was also at the hospital. “My father visited the hospital in the afternoon yesterday (Saturday). Once he returned, he told us that it was better for us to leave the child on a railway platform. This hospital has nothing to call itself a hospital,” Choudhary said. He was also waiting outside the mortuary.

Pawan Kasana, 35, a constable with Uttar Pradesh Police, said his son was his firstborn. “The doctor told us he has a stomach infection and needs care for a few days,” Kasana, who lives in Baghpat, said. “He was in the hospital for the past six days.” He said that when he brought his newborn there, the doctor told him everything will be fine. “My child was first admitted in a private hospital in Rajendra Nagar (Ghaziabad). There was no ventilator there so they referred us to this hospital,” he said.