New Delhi:
For 18 days, as Baby Falak battled brain damage, cardiac arrests and a litany of other injuries inflicted upon her by one or more adults, there was no sign of her mother. Tomorrow, the two-year-old will be visited by a young woman who claims Falak is her baby.
The 22-year-old woman does not know that her baby, the youngest of three children, has been subjected to relentless violence. Or that she lies on a hospital bed, hooked upto a ventilator, with every day that she survives being chalked up as a sort of miracle by her doctors. The baby was brought to AIIMS by a teenager who was apparently looking after her, it's not clear why.
Baby Falak's mother was traced to Jhunjhunu in Rajasthan by the Delhi Police, and is being counselled now by an NGO to help prepare her for what she will confront tomorrow.
She last saw her baby four months ago. She has told the police that she's from Bihar and got married in 2006, when she was 16.
Later she was lured to Delhi by a woman named Lakshmi with the promise of a job and a better future.
As her husband was involved in petty crimes, she moved to Delhi six months ago with the child that nurses at AIIMS have named Falak, her sister, and a five-year-old brother. Two women who she met in the capital tried to force her into prostitution but she refused. The same women then persuaded her into a second marriage with a man in Rajasthan who promised to look after and help raise her children.
The two women who allegedly separated Falak and her siblings from their mother in September last year, when she was married again in Rajasthan, have been arrested. The police have arrested them to get more details.
What's worrying is that it's not clear yet where Falak's siblings are, or if they're safe.
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Pic on right: A policewoman (C) with Laxmi (L) and Kanta, arrested by Delhi Police in Falak ,2, case in New Delhi on Monday.)