Baby Found Buried Alive in India Has 'Chances' at Survival — and a Family Ready to Adopt Her
The infant girl found buried alive in India reportedly remains in a fight for her life — though a local politician has promised to adopt her as his own as soon as she gets a clean bill of health.
The baby — who was rescued from a cemetery on Oct. 10 by a couple burying their own late child — has been in critical condition this week, battling sepsis and a “dangerously” low platelet count, pediatrician Ravi Khanna told the BBC.
“There are chances of her survival, but we would know for sure only after five to seven days,” Khanna said.
Sepsis, also known as septicemia, is blood poisoning caused by bacteria entering the bloodstream, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine.
The child was admitted to the hospital with hypoglycemia and a body temperature of just 95 degrees, pediatrician Dr. Saurabh Anjan told the BBC.
“She was tiny and very weak,” Anjan said. “We immediately put her on oxygen and began treating her for hypothermia.”
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She was reportedly transferred to Khanna’s hospital on Sunday because it was better equipped to treat the baby girl.
The newborn’s doctors’ guesses as to how long she had been buried differ; Khanna thinks it could have been as long as three or four days, while Anjan believes she only spent several hours in a ceramic pot before she was found by the couple.
“She survived on her brown fat. Babies are born with fat on their abdomen, thigh and cheek and they can survive on it in an emergency for some time,” Khanna said. “Once she exhausted that, she shriveled up — as you can see in her photograph.”
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Rajesh Kumar Mishra, a local state politician who is paying the baby’s medical bills, told the BBC he and his wife will raise her once she has recovered.
“It’s a miracle that she survived, I believe that god has saved her life and sent her to me. Now it’s our duty to do everything for her,” he said. “She is oscillating between life and death. Once she recovers, I will take her home and raise her as my daughter.”
He added that he has named the child Sita, after a Hindu goddess.
Pradeep Singh, a lead investigating officer, told Agence-France Press that authorities have “filed an attempt-to-murder case,” as well as one “for endangering the life of a child,” against the baby’s unidentified parents.
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The man who found the child said she was wrapped in cloth and crying, and that he immediately flagged down the cemetery’s security guard, who said he’d seen her parents there earlier, Reuters reported.
A local officer told the outlet that the incident “seems to be a case of female infanticide,” when parents deliberately kill newborn daughters.
According to AFP, female infanticide is on the rise in India, as parents want sons, and not daughters, because sons are “viewed as investments and heirs,” while daughters are a “liability.”
The U.S.-based NGO Invisible Girl Project reported that tens of thousands of female Indian fetuses are aborted every year, according to CNN. A government survey released in July showed that between 2015-17, the number of females in India per 1,000 males was just 896, down from previous years, Reuters reported.
