Baby Falak off ventilator, search on for biological parents

First, the good news. Today morning at 6am, doctors at AIIMS took baby Falak off the ventilator. Though in a coma, she is responding to the antibiotics given to her. “If she remains stable, we will perform a surgery next week,” Dr Deepak Agrawal, the pediatric neurosurgeon at AIIMS, who is treating Falak, told Firstpost. This is the second time since her admission to AIIMS on 18 January that the two-year-old baby has been taken off the ventilator.

Now, as for the criminal case, Delhi police has so far arrested four people on charges of forcing the teenager, who brought a battered Falak to AIIMS, into flesh trade.

On Thursday, a Delhi court committed the four accused to three days of police custody. The police will question each of them about their role in what appears to be a sex racket spread across many states.

The four have been booked on several charges, including rape, selling or aiding the sale of the girl, voluntarily causing hurt, and buying or selling a minor for prostitution.

The accused include Aarti, the woman arrested on Thursday, who was named by the teenager during questioning by the members of the child welfare committee.

Earlier, the police had arrested the teenager’s father, Jitender Gupta, who allegedly beat her, and Sandeep Pandey and his partner, Pooja, for forcing the girl into prostitution.

According to the police, Pooja had taken the teen to Etah district, Uttar Pradesh, where Sandeep allegedly sexually assaulted her for three days. Pooja hails from Sonagachhi, the red light area in Kolkata, reports the Times of India. She was married to Sandeep’s uncle but left him for Sandeep.

CNN IBN reports that Pooja wanted the girl to marry an old man. When she refused to do this, Pooja and Sandeep brought her to Tughlaqabad area in Delhi.

Aarti (25) is Pooja’s associate. For some days, she kept the teenager with her in South Delhi’s Munirka area.

“Aarti was the same woman who had kept the girl with her in Munirka after the teenager was raped by Sandeep and then brought over to Tughlakabad. Pooja then pushed the girl into prostitution at small hotels in south and southwest Delhi. Like Pooja, Aarti had also tried to marry the girl off to an old man. It was here that Raj Kumar alias Dilshad met the teenager while dropping clients to these hotels and eventually took her with him to Dwarka and eventually to the guesthouse at Mahipalpur,” a source told the channel.

Rajkumar also brought baby Falak to Mahipalpur guesthouse where she used to live with the teenager. When he went to Mumbai for some work for three days, the teen was the sole custodian of baby. It now appears that she could not handle her and when things went out of control, she allegedly beat and bit the baby. She then brought a bruised Falak to AIIMS. At the hospital, the girl said that she was the baby’s mother. Asked to explain the injuries, she had said that the baby had fallen from the bed while asleep. But when the doctors found that the injuries on the baby’s body did not match the version offered by the girl, they became suspicious and alerted the police.

Police is yet to trace Rajkumar. Search is also on for Munni, who is believed to be the mother of baby Falak.