Baby born mid-air gets a birth certificate

Baby born mid-air gets a birth certificate

Yeshika.Budhwar@timesgroup.com

Jaipur:13.04.2021

The baby boy born mid-air on the Bengaluru-Jaipur Indigo flight on March 17 was finally issued a birth certificate on Monday.

After TOI highlighted that the parents had been running from pillar to post to get the document, government officials got in touch with the airline which then sent a confirmation email about the child being born on board. The Jaipur municipal corporation was then contacted and it issued a birth certificate. Speaking exclusively to TOI, 27-day-old Lakshit’s father, Bhairu Singh, said, “After our son’s birth, I was being passed from one government office to another and all the officials seemed confused as he was born on a flight. I am really happy that finally the birth certificate has been issued and it is a weight off my shoulders. If the media had not highlighted the issue, I would probably have still been struggling.” Bhairu and his wife Lalita had boarded the flight at around 5.45 am at Bengaluru and landed at Jaipur airport at about 8 am on March 17 with their newborn baby.

“First I went to the sarpanch who asked me to go to the government hospital. But the staff there claimed that they could not issue the birth certificate because the baby was not born there and my wife only went to the government hospital for post-natal treatment. After the normal delivery mid-air, we were taken to a private hospital in Jaipur but the expenses were too high due to which we came home to our village in Beawar,” the father said.

After reading about the couple’s plight in TOI, Mahendra Pratap Singh, deputy secretary, Rajasthan state commission for protection of child rights, wrote to Indigo airlines and got a reply confirming the birth within a day. “I wanted to help the couple. Once the airline replied, I shared the details with the municipal corporation in Jaipur and fortunately they issued the birth certificate at the earliest,” said the deputy secretary.

After TOI highlighted that the parents had been running from pillar to post to get the document, govt officials got in touch with the airline