Zeenews Bureau
New Delhi: In what comes as a shocker, the two year old battered baby girl Falak has lost her battle for life, succumbing to an “unexpected” cardiac arrest, doctors at AIIMS said Thursday.
"It was unexpected. She was fit to be discharged. All of a sudden, she had a cardiac arrest at nine and we tried to revive her. But then she gave up at around 9.40 PM," said Deepak Agrawal, Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery at the AIIMS Trauma Centre.
Baby Falak was brought to AIIMS on January 18 in a severely battered state by a girl who falsely claimed to be her mother. With head injuries and human bite marks all over her body along with a broken arm and cheeks branded with hot iron, she was hospitalised in AIIMS trauma centre.
During the entire course of treatment spanning 58 days, Baby Falak displayed immense courage bearing all the harsh medical surgeries, earning the sobriquet of “miracle baby”.
She was fighting with blood, chest and brain infections for which she underwent six surgeries and was also put on ventilator.
Earlier, she also suffered two heart attacks.
"She suffered from meningitis for a long
time. She was also on the ventilator and we had to conduct a
tracheotomy. But she had survived all this and had recovered
well," said Dr Deepak Agarwal, who had been watching Falak since the very first day.
Baby Falak’s post-mortem would be conducted tomorrow as it is a medico-legal case, the doctor said.
Baby Falak’s case turned out to be an intensely intriguing one with many people involved who were victims themselves.
Investigations revealed the
shocking story of Falak, her two siblings and their mother who
were all separated after falling victim to human traffickers.
Falak's mother Munni was tricked into a second marriage
by three women out of whom two -- Laxmi and Kanta Choudhry --
were arrested. The trio had promised that her three children
will be taken care of but they were left to different people.
Ten people were also arrested in the case. Police traced down
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 Delhi Police to Muzaffarpur in Bihar.
On Februray 15, Falak was reunited with her 22-year-old
mother Munni who met her in the hospital.
Unexpected
What is most shocking is that of late, the doctors had been giving positive feedbacks on Falak’s health as she was doing well and was about to be discharged soon.
She had been removed from the ICU and
shifted to the ward.
"The whole day she used to spend time playing with the
nurses at the hospital. She was responding so well to the treatment and had her
condition had become good that we had even decided to
discharge her from the hospital this week. All of a sudden she had a cardiac arrest,” said Dr Agarwal.
The ‘miracle baby’ as she had come to be known affectionately, had made a place in people’s hearts who kept on praying for her. Besides Indians across the world, people from other countries, like US and Canada also wanted to adopt her.
But doctors say that even if she would have survived, she could only live in a vegetative state because of the large extent to which her brain was damaged.
With PTI inputs
First Published: Thursday, March 15, 2012, 22:33