IN SAFE HANDS: Nampally Circle Inspector K. Chakrapani with the baby girl Karuna Sree who was traced by the police in the city on Saturday. — Photo: G. Krishnaswamy

HYDERABAD: The Nampally police on Saturday traced the baby girl Karuna Sree who was stolen three days back from the Niloufer Hospital here.

The baby was found with a childless couple in Adoni of Prakasam district, who had bought her for Rs.10,000 from a hospital ayah, police said.

The ayah Sulochana who is now in police custody is said to have taken the child from the neo-natal ward of the hospital on Wednesday morning to her home in Ramnagar. She then rang up the couple, who reached the city the same evening and returned with the baby after paying Sulochana the money.

The baby who spent the whole of Saturday at the Nampally police station after being "rescued" from the couple was handed over to the State-run Sishu Vihar later in the day.

Breakthrough

Nampally Inspector K. Chakrapani said the breakthrough came when eyewitnesses at Niloufer, who had earlier pleaded ignorance about the intruder who took away the infant, opened up to the police about Sulochana walking away with the child.

"We also suspected her since she was staying put at the hospital without going home from Thursday onwards," he said.

Sulochana had met the Adoni couple a few times earlier when they came to the hospital for treatment for infertility.

She is said to have assured them that she would arrange an orphaned or abandoned baby from the hospital. Her chance came when Karuna Sree was admitted to Niloufer on Tuesday for treatment for diarrhoea.

Karuna Sree's eventful life in Hyderabad began when she was found wrapped in a bag beneath a seat on Satavahana Express at Secunderabad Railway Station on August 25, following which the Railway Police shifted her to Sishu Vihar in Yousufguda.

She was stolen from the ward when the Vihar staff deputed to take care of her went out to fetch milk.

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