Cop reunites mentally-ill mom, baby with husband from UP - The Times... https://epaper.timesgroup.com/Olive/ODN/TimesOfIndia/PrintArticle.as...

Cop reunites mentally-ill mom, baby with

husband from UP
Nitasha.Natu@timesgroup.com

Mumbai:

There wasn’t a dry eye when a team of policemen bid farewell to baby Mahi and her parents on a Bandra-
Lucknow train on Saturday.

Nine months ago, the police team had found a pregnant woman with a mental health condition on the
streets of Malad. She gave birth to Mahi in a hospital. But the woman could provide only bits and pieces
of information on her background and her family’s whereabouts. Sub-inspector Suresh Patil painstakingly
sewed together the pieces and tracked down her husband, who is a boatman in a Uttar Pradesh hamlet, and
reunited the family.

“The months of work that we had put into the case seemed totally worth it when Mahi finally had both her
parents by her side,” said Patil. “We hope this case increases trust and faith in the police force in the minds
of citizens.”

On September 16, 2018, during Ganeshotsav, the Malad police station received a call. A citizen reported
that a woman in her thirties was roaming the streets and appeared lost. She couldn’t tell the police
anything about who she was or how she had got there. The police presumed she had got separated from
her family during Ganpati visarjan. They took her to Cooper Hospital, where doctors revealed that she was
pregnant and was also suffering from a mental health condition.

Baby was kept in shelter home

The police then took her to the Thane mental hospital.

“We decided not to put pressure on her with too many
questions at a time,” said Patil. “We let her recover and
gradually posed queries about her husband, if she had
any children, her mother or inlaws. We also tried asking
if she could remember going to the bank for operating an
account or getting an Aadhar card made,” he added.

Mahi was born in January 2019. The police now had to

ensure the baby was well looked after as her mother was
Sub-inspector Suresh Patil with the reunited not in a position to care for her. The baby was produced
family before the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) at
Mankhurd. They assigned her to the Vatsalya Trust home
in Kanjurmarg. Police personnel kept tabs on the
condition of both mother and daughter. Then one day, the woman mentioned the location “Shuklaganj
Mandi” and “Ganga maiyya (the Ganga river)” a few times. On another occasion, she said her brother-in-
law ran a bicycle shop. Gradually, the police deduced that she hailed from UP and belonged to a
community of Nishads who work as rowers.

“A bunch of Malad police officers had been to UP to investigate another case. They had taken a lunch

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Cop reunites mentally-ill mom, baby with husband from UP - The Times... https://epaper.timesgroup.com/Olive/ODN/TimesOfIndia/PrintArticle.as...

break when one of them—assistant inspector Sanjay Pawar—happened to tell me they were near the river.
I requested them to make inquiries about the Nishad community. They found Shuklaganj Mandi and
eventually Vishwabhar Nishad, the woman’s husband,” said Patil. The police told him his wife and
daughter were in Mumbai. He said his wife’s name was Gunjan.

Meanwhile, Gunjan had recovered at the hospital and doctors certified her as fit to go home. Vishwabhar
(38) came to Mumbai and applied to the CWC to get Mahi’s custody. The police booked the couple a
railway ticket on the Bandra-Lucknow train for Saturday and helped them board it with clothes for Mahi
and sweets for the family reunion.

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