Pillayaar Answered My Prayers Article

[Guest guest]

Many Thanx Lambodara Das for sharing this article! Wonderful to read

such joyful news about the parents being reunited with their only

child.

Om Shree Ganeshaya Namah

Simone

 

 

, Lambodara Das <lambodara_das>

wrote:

> Pillayaar answered my prayers: Baby 81's mother

>

> PK Balachandran

>

> Colombo, February 14, 2005, 2005|17:16 IST

> Pillayaar answered my prayers: Baby 81's

mother&url=http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/7598_1241901,00050002000

2.htm" target=_blank> Related Stories[X] closeJayarajahs finally get

custody of Baby 81 »

 

> "Pillaiyaar has answered my prayers! " gushed Junita, the young Sri

Lankan Tamil mother, after a DNA test showed that she and her

husband, Murugapillai Jayarajah, were the natural parents of four-

month-old Abilash.

>

> He was admitted to the Kalmunai Base Hospital as a "tsunami orphan"

a month and a half ago.

>

> Pillaiyar is the Tamil name for the Elephant-faced popular Hindu

God, Ganesha. Junita and Jayarajah are both Hindus

>

> Both in their twenties, the couple had to fight an excruciatingly

long and painful battle with the hospital authorities and in the

Kalmunai magistrate's court, to secure custody of their only child.

>

> "Enakku romba Santhoshama Irukku, (I feel very happy)" Jayarajah

told Hindustan Times in his native Tamil, over the phone from

Kalmunai, in southeast Sri Lanka.

>

> The finding of the DNA test conducted at Genetech laboratories in

Colombo on Wednesday, was revealed to the grim-faced and anxious

couple at the Kalmunai magistrate's court on Monday.

>

> The Jayarajahs received the verdict with unbounded joy. The smile,

which had deserted them on the morning of December 26, 2004, when the

tsunami washed away their three-month-old child, came back to their

faces in a flash.

>

> "The DNA test has proved beyond doubt that Junita and Jayarajah are

the real parents of Baby-81," the court Registrar, MSM Nazeer, said.

>

> However, the Jayarajahs would not be getting Abilash back until

10.30 am on February 16, when the court would formally hand over the

child to them in the presence of the Kalmunai Base Hospital Medical

Superintendent, Dr Kandaswamy Muruganantham, Nazeer said.

>

> Till then he will continue to be "Baby-81", the tsunami orphan in

the maternity ward of the Kalmunai Base Hospital.

>

> The saga of Baby-81 became an international media event, because,

at the outset, as many as nine couples were laying claim to him.

>

> To this, hospital nurse Pushpa added a sub-plot, when she took the

child to her home, apparently with an intention to being him up as

her own.

>

> The Jayarajahs, helped by their friend, philosopher and guide,

Sriskandarajah, a local English teacher, had to fight hard with

Pushpa to get the baby back into hospital.

>

> Sriskandarajah, even wrote a letter to President Chandrika

Kumaratunga seeking her intervention on humanitarian grounds. But he

got no reply, he said.

>

> When a formal police complaint was made mandatory for couples to

lay claim to the child, or even see him, all the couples, barring the

Jayarajahs, dropped out.

>

> Even so, Kalmunai Magistrate Mohideen, on the advice of the

hospital authorities, refused to hand over the child to the

Jayarajahs and ordered a DNA test to confirm their parenthood.

>