Boy ‘stolen’ by surrogate mom traced after 4 years

MEERUT/ DEHRADUN: A four-year-old boy born to a surrogate mother was reunited with his family on Sunday after a team of

Dehradun

police’s

special operation group

and cops from Rishikesh Kotwali in

Uttarakhand

raided a location in

Meerut

Sadar Bazar area and recovered him. He was living with a relative of his biological mother, who, after giving birth to twins in 2015, had lied to his parents that one of them died during delivery.


“The first woman we contacted for

surrogacy

fled after taking Rs 50,000. The second one fled with our child,” said Dinesh Rawat, the father. According to Meerut police, the couple had hired a woman — Kajal (name changed) from Meerut and native of

West Bengal

— for surrogacy in 2014. “Kajal delivered twin boys in 2015 at a nursing home in West Bengal but told the couple that one of them died during the delivery,” Vijay Gupta, Meerut Sadar police SHO told TOI.

However, the couple suspected her claim and started looking for the other child. Throughout their hunt, which stretched to over three years, the couple were sure that the child was alive somewhere, but the police was not. According to Dinesh, police refused to file a case citing lack of proof. The parents found some evidence and the case was finally registered in Dehradun last year.

Eventually Kajal was booked for cheating in 2018 and an investigation to recover the child began. Police recently got a fresh tip-off about the likely presence of the child in Meerut or Aligarh. The child was recovered from Pandit Gautam Mukherjee, one of the relatives of Kajal. Sarita Rawat, mother of the twins, broke down after seeing her second son for the first time. The child, named Golu by his surrogate mother, tried to console her. “Why are you crying aunty?” Golu asked. Tukku, the second son of the couple, also exchanged toys with his new-found brother.