Calcutta, June 28: Amitabh Bachchan may have just become an unwitting saviour of unwanted babies born in Bengal.

Sabitri Mitra, the minister in charge of the women welfare department, has come up with a plan to save such babies from being dumped on the streets, partly inspired by the 1977 blockbuster Amar Akbar Anthony.

The minister has said she will submit a proposal for all government hospitals across the state to have a designated room where unwanted babies can be left behind so they can get better care.

“People dump unwanted babies wherever they want to, even in open streets and garbage vats. Cats and dogs maul the newborns left on the streets…. I will submit a proposal that hospitals should have special rooms where children not wanted by their parents can be left behind safely,” Mitra said at Writers’ Buildings.

“There was something similar in Amar Akbar Anthony. In (TV) serials, too, they have shown children being left in hospitals,” Mitra said.

While unwanted babies are not left behind in hospitals in the film, Amitabh, who plays Anthony, is one of three brothers separated in childhood.

A priest who finds him asleep on the steps of his church names him Anthony and brings him up. The other brothers, Amar (Vinod Khanna) and Akbar (Rishi Kapoor), are brought up by a Hindu policeman and a Muslim tailor, respectively. The trio are later united.

If Mitra wants, she can also look for inspiration down south. Ammathottil (Mothers’ Cradle), a project launched by the Kerala State Council for Child Welfare in 2002, has enabled mothers to leave unwanted children in government care.

Ammathottil, launched when A.K. Antony was chief minister, has so far given shelter to around 200 babies in state capital Thiruvananthapuram.

Mitra said she would suggest to Shyamapada Mukherjee, the minister for child welfare, that the designated hospital rooms have baskets and cots where the babies can be left behind.

“The parents who don’t want the child will have to leave the babies at the hospital. The rooms will have baskets and cots where they can drop the child. Before leaving the room, the person would have to ring a bell so that the doctors and nurses are aware of the arrival of a baby,” Mitra said.

The rooms wouldn’t be watched or kept under lock and key.

After a baby is left behind at the hospital, it would be registered with child welfare committees and sent to a home.

The minister recalled the case of a girl child dumped in Malda. “A two-and-a- half-month-old girl was dumped in a bag on a street. A gardener spotted the bag. I got the baby together with a childless couple and gave her the name Durgesh Nandini,” the Trinamul member said.