Paying the price for saving her marriage

By Lalit Shastri

BHOPAL, NOV. 17. The child-selling racket involving a flourishing nursing home in the State capital that was unearthed by the police recently has brought into sharp focus the plight of a woman who paid money to secure a child only to protect her marriage and save herself from mental trauma and stigma for failing to bear a child.

Rehana (name changed), in her late twenties, wore a forlorn look, with nothing much to look forward to, as she sat with ``her seven-and-half month old daughter'' and mother at Shahjehanabad Police station waiting to be escorted to the district court in connection with the child selling case registered recently by the police. Sitting for hours with the baby at the Police station, with newspersons hounding her has become routine. She even complained to this correspondent this afternoon that it has become an ordeal for her ever since the police smashed the racket and rounded her up.

The police had raided a nursing home last week and arrested its owners, Dr. P.K. Jain and his wife Dr. Sarla Jain, along with some nurses on the charge of selling children born to unwed mothers.

Rehana, a B.Sc. graduate, comes from a lower-middle class family. Married in November 1997 to a bank employee, initially her married life was all ``happiness and bliss''. After marriage, the couple shifted to Udaipura, a small town near Bhopal, where her husband was posted. Soon she also started working in a school.

Her tale of woes, according to Rehana, began after she had a miscarriage three months after marriage. Subsequently, she had two more miscarriages. In the meanwhile, last year her husband got a promotion and was transferred as head cashier to the Anandpur village branch of a nationalised bank in Vidisha district.

Rehana narrated, with anguish, that her husband had started ill- treating her after the first miscarriage and his behaviuour deteriorated with each passing day. Her trauma got more aggravated when he started suspecting even her character. At his new place of posting, she said, he even went to the extent of hiding the fact that he was married. On one of his visits to Udaipura she had confronted him with this and thereafter he stopped visiting her.

Under the circumstances, Rehana felt the marriage was heading for disaster as she was unable to bear a child. She was already under Dr. Sarla Jain's treatment and, as a last resort, planned to procure a child with her help. Finally in March this year she could procure the baby from the nursing home after paying Rs. 22,000. All this was not without drama. Her husband's absence since September last year could give her the leverage to pretend conception and get admitted to the nursing home for delivery and pass off the new-born as her daughter.

After the sensational exposure by the police, Rehana's in-laws and husband severed their ties with her. She continues to pay a heavy price for an act she committed to save herself from social stigma.

Rehana is not alone. Similar ordeals await unwed mothers being hunted by the overenthusiastic police in the case.

Although action against the activities of the nursing home is warranted, the undue publicity given about the women involved and their families has brought more misery to them and ruined their lives in a way the investigating agency may probably not have intended.

There is a general opinion here that women in such circumstances need protection and their plight needs to be kept in sharp focus while divulging details. The investigating agency should have kept personal details confidential. A senior citizen said: ``Maybe the Human Rights Commission would like to look into and advise the investigating agency on how best to go about such cases so that criminals are brought to book but the social life of the hapless women is not ruined by unnecessary exposure''.

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