1-year-old girl asks for water, mother accidentally gives acid stored in water bottle

Bengaluru, Oct 3: A one-year-old girl is battling for life after her mother accidentally gave her toilet-cleaning acid stored in a water bottle to drink.

The incident took place at Chinnappanahalli in east Bengaluru a few days ago when the family was attending a puja at a friend’s newly-built house and the girl has been admitted in Rainbow Children’s Hospital in Marathahalli.

The victim, Payal, is the second child of a labourer couple from Bihar. Her mother Gemini Devi had given her a biscuit and, after eating it, the girl asked for water. When Devi found a half-filled bottle on a window shelf, she mistook it for water. Immediately after taking one or two sips, the child started screaming and fumes came out of her mouth, to the shock of her parents. She was soon breathless.

“The bottle was half empty and, as it looked like water, my wife gave it to her,” said Payal’s father Jairaj Mathur. “We realised the mistake only after she started crying. We took her to a nearby hospital, but were asked to shift her to a bigger centre. We then came to Rainbow Children’s Hospital where she was put on ventilator immediately. She is now under observation.”

Dr Sujatha T, consultant paediatric intensivist, Rainbow Children’s Hospital, said the child’s food pipe, stomach walls and windpipe were damaged. “Payal cannot even swallow saliva. After four weeks, she’ll undergo surgery to widen the food pipe when the upper part of the gut is healed,” she said.

The hospital has started a crowd-funding initiative to help the girl as her parents are poor.

Doctors said the parents of Payal had brought the bottle to the hospital. “The bottle was a typical water container and bore a label ‘toilet cleaning acid’. We don’t know exactly what chemical was in it but it was acid of some type. Parents have to be careful while administrating anything to children,” said Dr Sujatha.