JJ kidnap: Tragedy piles up for parents

Afterwards, hospital authorities allowed Vidya to hold the baby anyway, prompting an angry response from Prakash’s elder cousin Harish: ‘‘This whole thing is cruel and unfair. If it wasn’t our baby why did they allow Vidya to hold it for five minutes after all these days? This whole DNA thing is a hoax.’’

‘‘He must be dead,’’ says Prakash’s brother Ashok.

Police have assured the family they will continue to scour the city for their baby. But the wait, the false alarms and the media circus have left the family feeling betrayed.

Perhaps the most tragic figure is that of the mother, 20-year-old Vidya. Her family had kept her cordoned in a ward room in an attempt to pressure the hospital and police to take action in the case.

‘‘That poor girl was haunted by the dozens of babies crying in the maternity ward,’’ says Aruna Chauhan, Vidya’s sister-in-law. ‘‘She would get up with each cry and wonder if the baby was hers and when she realised what she was doing, she would start sobbing again. We had to bring her home.’’

But after the family took her away for a couple of days, hospital and ward doctors told them not to come back. If they had any queries they should go to police, they were told. Vidya was brought home a couple of days ago.

But home has given the grieving couple little respite. Walk into Walpakhadi, a few minutes from JJ Hospital, and there is talk of little else in the buzzing chawl. All Vidya can do is to avoid the barrage of questions from the neighbouring ladies and play with her four-month-old niece.