New Delhi, March 15: After battling for life at All India Institute of Medical Sciences for the past over 60 days, two-year-old battered baby Falak died late Thursday of cardiac arrest.
Baby Falak was brought to AIIMS Trauma Centre about two months ago with severe head injuries, broken arms, bite marks all over the body and cheeks branded with hot iron.
“It came as a sudden shock,” said Dr M C Misra, chief, AIIMS Trauma Centre. He said till afternoon she was doing fine. “At 7 pm, her heart rate started to go down. She had cardiac arrest at 9 pm. We tried to revive her, but in vain. At 9:40 pm she was declared dead,” said Dr Misra. The post-mortem will be conducted on Friday to detect the actual cause of death.
Baby Falak had two cardiac arrests in the first week of her admission in the Trauma Centre. Her survival after such post-trauma shock and subsequent recovery was termed as a miracle by doctors. Till Wednesday, she was expected to be discharged in a few days. “It is depressing and we are all taken aback,” said Dr Misra.
Falak was brought to AIIMS on January 18 by a teenage girl, who claimed to be her mother. She said the child got injuries as she fell in the bathroom. However, the nature of her injuries created suspicion among doctors.
Doctors found she was subjected to battered baby syndrome in which injuries are inflicted on children’s bodies by someone close to them. The teenager herself was found to be the one who gave Falak the injuries.
She was charged with section 308 of the Indian Penal Code (attempt to commit culpable homicide). With Falak’s death, the charge will be converted to 304 A (causing death by negligence).
The case of Falak had caught imagination of the entire nation. Scores of people from India and abroad had sent requests to the hospital for her adoption. She had developed acute sepsis due to which her brain fluid and blood were badly infected. In less than two months she had five surgeries.
Over the past 10 days her tests showed negative results for infections, giving hope for her reasonable recovery. Despite a broken skull, doctors were hopeful she will not have to live life in a vegetative state.
On Februray 15, Falak was reunited with her 22-year-old mother Munni, who was married to a man in Rajasthan.
Investigations revealed the shocking story of Falak, her two siblings and their mother who were all separated after falling victim to human traffickers.
Munni was tricked into a second marriage by three women out of whom two — Laxmi and Kanta Choudhry — were arrested by the Delhi Police. The trio had promised that her three children will be taken care of but they were left to different people.
Ten people were arrested in the case. The police traced Falak’s five-year-old brother from the house of a vendor in West Delhi’s Uttam Nagar locality while her sister Sanobar was traced by the Delhi Police to Muzaffarpur in Bihar.
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