KATHMANDU, Aug 4: Concerns from all sides were rising last week when news of a woman finding an abandoned neonate was circulating all over social media. Puspa Adhikari, the woman who claimed to have found the abandoned baby was busy giving interviews to various media platforms who wished to cover the story. Evidently, Adhikari had called few of the media platforms by herself asking them to report the issue. Within a few hours of the coverage, the story went big, gathering the attention of people from all walks of life. Within a week of the story being first reported, Adhikari managed to collect over half a million rupees in the form of donations for the baby from the public.
However, police investigation has found that the entire story was a sham and everything that the woman did was scripted to receive media hype in order to collect money.
“Adhikari is under investigation and we are still trying to find why she instigated a false scenario,” said Nabin Karki, DSP at Metropolitan Police Circle, Bauddha.
As informed by Karki who is also the chief at the circle, Adhikari runs a home-based care center named ‘Care Bal Griha’ where she looks after 15 other children - all of whom are girls.
Three arrested for collecting donations illegally
The baby in this case, too, is a girl and was just two days old when Adhikari instigated the scene. Her real mother was repatriated from Dubai on June 22. Under the coordination of the Nepal Army, she was in a holding center for quarantine. However, she was taken to Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital in Maharajgunj on July 19 and the baby was born on July 21.
“The mother has claimed that the baby was born out of wedlock,” said DSP karki, adding that she has a husband in Chitwan and he had no clue about her pregnancy.
After the mother and her baby were discharged by the hospital on July 24, they were both sent to Aapravasi Mahila Kamdar Samuha (AMKAS) –an organization that looks after returnee women migrant workers and works to establish a strong network among such women migrants.
The organization is coordinated by Jamuna Giri who happens to be friends with Adhikari. The mother shared her story with Giri who informed Adhikari about the incident. Adhikari then supplicated Giri and the mother to take the baby explaining that she has a care home and she can look after the baby.
“The mother decided to endow her baby to Adhikari as she didn’t want her husband to know about the whole story,” said DSP Karki.
Nevertheless, after taking the baby Adhikari went on to fabricate a different set-up by calling media outlets to cover the story and claiming that she found the baby in an abandoned condition.
In an interview she even went on to say that she will keep the baby with herself for the entire lifetime and would love and care for her as her own daughter. “I am a mother and would never do that to my own child. Considering how her own mother ruthlessly abandoned her, I will keep her with me and will give every kind of nourishment and love she needs,” she had said.
Moreover, following the media coverage, many people from within the nation and abroad had sent donations to Adhikari for the baby’s nourishment. Several people had even called Adhikari asking to adopt the baby but Adhikari had turned down the calls claiming that she wishes to look after the baby by herself, but will accept any other form of help such as financial and physical donations.
Now however, Adhikari claims that she fabricated the scenario not to collect money but in order to help the baby’s mother. “I did all of that because I wanted to help the mother,” DSP Karki shared Adhikari’s exact words she said during the investigation.
As mentioned by Karki, the baby has been returned to her biological mother and they’re both being looked after by AMKAS, the returnee women migrant workers organization.
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