Sumitra Deb Roy & Mayura Janwalkar / DNA
Mumbai, Aug 14: “If not the court, at least god was on our side,” Haresh Mehta told DNA on Wednesday August 13 night confirming that his wife Niketa had a miscarriage on Tuesday.
Haresh and Niketa had moved Bombay high court to abort the foetus that had been diagnosed with congenital complete heart block.
According to Haresh, Niketa, who was in her 27th week of pregnancy, complained of severe pain on Tuesday night and was rushed to Ankur Hospital in Kandivli where she had a miscarriage.
“It was a natural death for our child,” said Haresh, blaming the intense media attention for his wife’s high blood pressure and increased stress level that led to the miscarriage.
Haresh said his wife went to Kandivli on Monday to give tuitions, but since she was in a lot of pain she stayed at her mother’s place instead of returning home to Bhayander.
“When her condition worsened, we rushed her to the hospital. It all happened suddenly,” he said.
When DNA contacted Haresh on Wednesday afternoon, he had denied that Niketa had suffered a miscarriage. “We did not want the death of our child to be splashed across the media and it to become a public spectacle. We wanted to be left alone,” he said about his denial.
“Although we are pained at the loss of our child, we thank God for sparing it a life of agony,” he said, adding they hoped they would have a healthy child in future.
In-charge of the BMC-run crematorium at Dahanukarwadi, Prakash Solanki, who was on duty confirmed that the Mehtas’ baby was buried there. Papers from the nursing home recorded a stillbirth, he said. He added that post-mortem had not been conducted as it was a stillborn child. Solanki said Haresh came to the crematorium around 11:30 pm on Tuesday along with two others to bury the child.
Solanki said Haresh had insisted on a death certificate. “But the BMC does not have provisions to give death certificate for a foetus,” he added.
He said Haresh visited the crematorium again early on Wednesday and took away some soil from the burial spot for a ritual. The crematorium register states, against the name of Niketa Haresh Mehta, that a stillborn child was cremated at 11:30 pm on Tuesday.
Doctors and staffers at Ankur Hospital, located on the first floor of a residential building near Kandivli railway station, were tight-lipped. “No such patient was admitted here,” said one of the staffers. Even the gynaecologist at the clinic Dr Saurabh Dani seemed uncomfortable on being questioned about Niketa. “It concerns the privacy of a patient and so I would not like to comment,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Mehtas’ gynaecologist Nikhil Datar, who had moved court with the couple, seemed unaware of the development. “I spoke to Niketa eight to 10 days back and she said she wanted to come for a check-up. If such a thing (delivery of a stillborn) were to happen, I would have known about it”.
“The Mehtas came to me for second opinion but we jointly filed a court petition. So they would have at least made a courtesy call to me if it was true,” he added.
DNA was the first to report (on July 25) that the couple from Bhayander wanted to abort the foetus after it was diagnosed with congenital complete heart block in the 24th week of pregnancy. They, along with Datar, had moved court seeking the right to abort the foetus which is not permissible beyond the 20th week of pregnancy under the Medical Termination of Pregnancies (MTP) Act, 1971, unless there is a risk to the mother’s health.
On August 4, the court had turned down their plea. The court had also said that medical evidence did not suggest that the foetus needed to be aborted.
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