Rani with the boy at the Alipurduar hospital on Sunday. (Anirban Choudhury)

Alipurduar, June 29: A woman claiming to be the mother of a one-year-old boy rescued from a Jammu-bound train earlier this month came to the Alipurduar hospital today to take back the child, but was told by the administration to prove her identity.

However, the hospital authorities allowed Rani Acharjee to meet the boy. Rani said her husband, Nepal Acharjee, had walked out of their house in Assam’s Bongaigaon district with the child, Sagar, on June 4. The on-duty railway employees at the Alipurduar station found the boy on the Amarnath Express travelling from Guwahati to Jammu on the same day, at 10pm.

Nepal has been missing since.

“I have brought a photograph of me with Sagar on my lap. Soon I will bring the birth certificate of Sagar, my ration card and the certificate I got after passing Class X,” said Rani.

Alipurduar subdivisional officer R. Alice Vez said: “Today, I am very busy with the civic polls in town, but I have received the information that the mother of the child has come. I will definitely guide them regarding what they have to do. Since the matter is in court, they have to get an order from there.”

After rescuing the boy, the on-duty railway employees had handed him over to police who took him to hospital.

The next day, an NGO submitted a prayer in the nearest juvenile court in Cooch Behar, asking it to keep the boy in Alipurduar hospital instead of sending it to a children’s home in Jalpaiguri. The court agreed to grant the plea.

At Bijni in Bongaigaon, Rani had been waiting for her husband and child.

“Nepal left with Sagar after a quarrel with me. Since then, I got no news of them. I called up my family in Hazipur of Bihar and my brother Bijoy Choudhury rushed to Assam. He came to know about a child found on a train in Alipurduar from one Bishnu Sarkar of Bongaigaon. We immediately came here to reclaim my child,” said Rani.

The woman and her relatives arrived in New Alipurduar station last night. The station authorities allowed them to spend the night in the waiting room before they went to meet the boy.

“I took him in my lap, fed him biscuits and spent more than an hour with my son,” said Rani.

“I appeal to the local administration to hand over my son to me as soon as possible,” she added.

The subdivisional officer said authorities in both Bijni and Hazipur were being contacted to verify Rani’s claims.