?It?s a lie. How can they say that my baby did not die during the power cut??

The government continued to play the denial game and repeated that no one had died during the power cut at BC Roy Memorial Hospital for Children on Monday. But Neelima and Mangal Mondol recounted how their one-month-old boy had suffocated to death in the heat and darkness, on bed no. 91 of ward seven.

To challenge the government?s claim, the couple from Gaighata refused to take the infant?s body, and gave a written undertaking to the effect.

?My son died in darkness, unattended, yet they claimed that he died much later on Monday, in the presence of doctors. This is our way of protesting their claim,? said Neelima, at her Gaighata home, in North 24-Parganas.

On Tuesday afternoon, trouble broke out at BC Roy again when a nurse allegedly asked the parents of a one-and-a-half-year-old boy, Gopal Mondol, to leave the hospital.

They had come from Hasnabad to admit Gopal, who is suffering from acute broncho pneumonia. ?Fed up with the staff misbehaviour, we decided to leave the hospital, although the baby is in a critical condition,? said Gopal?s father Suraj Mondol.

On Monday, three babies had died within a span of 10 hours, but the government officially recorded that the ?baby of Neelima Mondol? died around 8 am, three hours after power supply was restored.

?For the past 22 days, my baby had been in the hospital. We were hoping to take him back within a day or two, as he seemed to have survived the crisis, but the power cut dashed our hopes,? cried Neelima.

It was around 3 am that the lights went out. Neelima asked for doctors to check her son, who was tossing and turning in bed. In the darkness, she implored the nurses to fetch a doctor. ?But they told me curtly that the doctors could not be located in the dark and asked me to wait till the lights returned,? she said.

Fifteen minutes later, a few lanterns were lit, but the baby was hardly breathing. ?In the heat, the cramped ward turned into a gas chamber, and my son was barely moving. The nurses and doctors said they were more worried about the power cut,? she recounted.

?It was around 4 am that my son stopped moving and became stone cold within half an hour, but no one would come near him. It was only at 6 am that a doctor confirmed he was dead,? she added.

Health minister Surjya Kanta Mishra and the hospital superintendent stressed on Tuesday that none of the deaths could be linked to the power failure.