Mumbai: It took only a few hours for Mumbai Police to recover and reunite the mother with her five-day-old baby, stolen on Thursday afternoon from BYL Nair hospital. The Agripada police have arrested a woman named Hazel Corriea, 37, for kidnapping the baby. The case was solved thanks to the alertness of police constable Dattatray Gaikwad and nurse Bhakti Barve of VN Desai hospital.
According to the police, Hazal ran away with the baby at around 6.30pm on Thursday from Nair hospital. Soon after fleeing with the baby, Hazel realised there was blood coming from the baby’s stomach. Hazel went to VN Desai hospital at Santacruz, but as soon as she entered the hospital, she was shocked to see a policeman (Dattatray Gaikwad) present there who was apparently on his routine duty.
Seeing Hazel, Gaikwad too found something suspicious. By that time, the news of the kidnapped baby went viral and Gaikwad received the message and a snapshot of the kidnapper woman on his Whatssapp. The lady in front of Gaikwad was wearing the same blue kurta and black salwar. Even the baby which the woman was carrying was quite similar to the kidnapped baby’s picture. Gaikwad alerted the doctors and his superiors.
When the doctors asked Hazel about the delivery, she initially said she had delivered at her home. But there was no sign of delivery and the baby was a few days old. On further questioning, she confessed to kidnapping the baby from Nair hospital. A resident of Nalasopara, Hazel Corriea is a housewife and her husband is an estate agent. According to the police, “This is her second marriage and she could not bear a baby. Her husband was threatening to leave her if she was unable to bear a baby. This led her to kidnap the baby,” said an officer from Agripada police station.
“For the past few days, Hazel has been going to the paediatric ward and she had zeroed in on Sheetal Salvi’s newborn baby, as her bed was close to the door,” said an officer from the Agripada Police staion. On Thursday, when the baby’s mother was asleep, Hazel put him in the bag and fled the hospital. After this, she called up her husband and said he had become a father.
- SACHIN GAAD
