A newly born baby stuffed in a bag and abandoned on the Patna-Chandigarh Summer Special train near Bareilly has resulted in the exposure of an appalling crime in Bihar. Shopkeepers on the train heard the wails of the infant and found the baby boy with his umbilical cord intact inside a toilet. Staff quickly transferred the child to an air-conditioned bus, fearing suffocation from overwhelming heat and humidity, and offloaded at Moradabad, where he was given medical treatment.
The infant was said to have been born on June 22. ANI said a teenage girl—pregnant due to purported repeated sexual assault by her father—was being brought to Delhi “for treatment.” But her water broke during a stop near Varanasi, and she delivered in the toilet of a train. Her family later dumped the child on a different train by putting him in a bag.
Within the bag, police found a SIM card that proved to be the solution to solving the case. “When the SIM card was traced, the owner of the SIM card explained to us that the baby belonged to a minor girl relative of his, who had conceived due to rape,” said Moradabad junction railway police station in-charge Ravindra Vashistha.
The family of the victim lives in Chhapra, Bihar. The girl later disclosed that her father, who was usually drunk, had been sexually exploiting her for more than a year before she became pregnant. The case is now transferred to the Bihar police for investigation.
Welfare Committee Takes Custody of Newborn in Bihar
The railway police took the minor girl to Moradabad, where she met Childline officials from the rescue service run by the Union Ministry of Women and Child Development. The girl, accompanied by her mother and grandmother, submitted a written statement declaring that she could not take care of the child.
The infant is now in the custody of Moradabad’s Child Welfare Committee. “The baby would not be adopted immediately; that process would start after two months, by which time the victim could change her mind and ask for the custody of the baby,” said the head of the committee, Amit Kaushal.
The case points to egregious failures in protecting children and the need for immediate justice. Bihar police have ordered a complete probe to ensure the accused is brought before the law.