Tsunami Baby Custody Dispute

A Sri Lankan court on Wednesday ordered a couple claiming to be the parents of the tsunami survivor known as "Baby 81" to undergo a DNA test to decide whether they really are his mother and father.

The order dismayed the couple, who face an agonizing wait of eight weeks or more for the tests to be completed. The judge ordered that the 3 1/2-month-old baby stay in hospital care until the issue is settled.

The couple, Murugupillai Jeyarajah and his wife Jenita, had hoped to be granted custody of the baby during Wednesday's hearing, though they had previously said they would submit to whatever tests the court ordered to prove their parentage.

When told that the child would be put back into hospital care until at least April 20, when the court will reconvene to hear the test results, Jenita Jeyarajah beat her chest and cried out that she couldn't be away from her child that long.

Murugupillai Jeyarajah waved a bottle containing liquid, threatening to drink it to kill himself. Supporters clutched at him to restrain him.

The couple and a group of about 70 supporters rushed from the courthouse to Kalmunai Base Hospital where the baby is staying and stormed into the maternity ward demanding to see him. Jenita picked the child up from his crib and held him close while hospital officials tried to calm the crowd.

Authorities shut the hospital's gates and called police, fearing the group would try to take the child away. Police came and told the crowd to leave the hospital, but wound up arresting the couple and two of their supporters.

"We had no other option but to arrest them because they did assault hospital staff," said W.P Wijeyatilleka, a police officer from Kalmunai.

He said the couple stormed into the pediatric ward without permission and obstructed the doctors on duty.

The plight of Baby 81 - so named because he was the 81st admission to the hospital on Dec. 26, the day the tsunami struck - has become emblematic of the disaster's effect on families. In Sri Lanka alone, the waves claimed the lives of some 12,000 children, about 40 percent of Sri Lanka's death toll of 31,000.

In the days immediately after the tsunami, nine women claimed the boy as their own, though only the Jeyarajahs lodged a formal custody claim. They said documents proving the boy was theirs were swept away.

"Thousands of babies have died and maybe hundreds of them are missing," Judge M.P. Mohaideen said during Wednesday's hearing. "It's only after a DNA test that we can be sure that we are correct."

Mohaideen also said the other people who had claimed to be the child's parents should report to police and have DNA samples taken.

"This is very important in case the DNA tests does not match this couple," Mohaideen said.

Doctors at the hospital had opposed the baby being handed to the Jayarajahs without a court ruling, saying that even though the others had not followed up on their initial claims there was no other way to be sure the Jayarahas were truly his parents.

Baby 81 survived among dead bodies and rubble until he was found by rescuers nine hours after the disaster.

Before Wednesday's hearing, doctors had allowed the Jeyarajahs to visit the boy twice a week, with the restriction that they have not been permitted to pick him up and take him out of his crib in the children's ward at the hospital.

By Dilip Ganguly