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Local police found Ke Ke, a 6-day-old baby girl, and reunited her with her parents two days after she was stolen from a hospital in Xinghua of Jiangsu province on Nov 4. [China Daily]
The baby, named Ke Ke, was just six days old when her parents discovered her missing at the Oriental Obstetrics Hospital in Xinghua on Friday morning.
"Ke Ke was supposed to lie in the cradle in front of her mother`s bed. But we woke up around 5 am and found her gone," said Zhang Jinbing, the 22-year-old father.
A camera in the hospital captured images of a woman leaving the hospital at around 0:20 am carrying a baby, and following a tip-off from a taxi driver, who drove two females with a baby to Xinghua`s Daduo town, the infant was found on Nov 6 in a residential block.
Two women, a 23-year-old, surnamed Mu, and her mother were detained by the police.
Mu, a local resident who is unable to have children, told police she was afraid that her husband might divorce her because of her infertility, so she pretended to be pregnant while keeping a watch on expectant mothers at the hospital.
On Nov 4, after Mu stole the infant from the hospital, she went back to her hometown with her mother to get a birth certificate for the baby at a local hospital. She told doctors that she gave birth on the way to the hospital.
Mu and her mother were arrested by police on their return to Xinghua.
"It is the first case of a baby being stolen from a hospital in Xinghua, and we take it very seriously," said Wu Jinsong, director of the publicity department of Xinghua public security bureau.
Zhang demanded an explanation from the hospital of how a baby could be stolen from inside a ward.
"How can strangers enter the hospital so easily and take away a baby without anybody noticing? Where are the security guards, where are the nurses?" he asked.
"The hospital is a public service, and we cannot lock the door to prevent people entering and the nurses were dealing with paper work during the night," said Lin Zhifu, deputy director of the Oriental Obstetrics Hospital.
"The suspect planned the theft very carefully," Lin added.
Mu came to the hospital frequently and even made an appointment to give birth, "some of our doctors recognized her face afterward", Lin said.
"As a service provider, the hospital has the obligation to take care of security arrangements," said Zhou Xueyu, a lawyer at the Shanghai Joint Harvest Law Firm, "However, what kind of blame the hospital should take needs to wait for the results of the investigation."
The hospital is enhancing its security and adding more staff members to prevent a similar incident from happening again. |
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| Date:2011-11-8 16:42:02 |
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