RAWALPINDI – Sickened with grief and riddled with cancer, Nazima Bibi died 10 days after a woman snatched her five-year-old daughter from a busy hospital’s waiting room in Islamabad.
35-year-old housewife had been sitting on a bench with her baby son and daughter Rabiea in the reception of Islamabad’s main public hospital when the girl was led away by a woman into a noisy crowd. Bibi said she was too weak to give chase or shout as her daughter was stolen, and was then forcibly admitted to the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences for cancer treatment. In grief, she refused to eat and finally died.
The general trend of kidnapping and abduction in the country was on the rise and there were more reports of newborn babies stolen from hospitals, said National Police Bureau Deputy Director Nazir-ul-Hassan. The Edhi Foundation estimated that about 40 newborn babies were stolen from hospitals last year, according to figures collected from parents’ reports at its centres nationwide.
In most cases, the thieves were women who were infertile and wanted to satisfy their husbands and family, said Masood Safdar, spokesman for the District Headquarters Hospital Rawalpindi.
