(Top) Dimple before marriage and (bottom) with her husband

Chandigarh/Tarn Taran (Amritsar), June 5: Being dumped in a hospital’s garbage pit as a newborn isn’t what hurts Dimple Eric most. It’s her biological parents’ unabashed attempts now, when she is a successful working woman, to lay claim on her and control her life.

Which is why, 28 years after they abandoned her, Dimple has sued Harbans and Giani Sukhdev Singh, now residents of Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh, for Rs 10 lakh.

Dimple had been born to the couple, who then lived in the village of Bandala in Amritsar, at Tarn Taran civil hospital on May 17, 1977.

She was one of twins, both girls, in a state where parents are notorious for killing their girl children in the womb or just after birth.

Punjab’s sex ratio of 874 women per 1,000 males is the lowest among Indian states and is far below the national figure of 933, a human development report has stated.

Her parents say they were forced to abandon her because of poverty ? they just could not afford bringing up a second girl.

It was the medical superintendent of a nearby hospital, St Mary’s, who rescued the baby from a pack of hungry dogs that had attacked her. S.M. Karanjia, who already had a daughter, gave her a home and a second chance at life.

As she grew up to become proficient at computers, which has got her a job with Reliance Telecom, her biological parents cast their shadow on her life again.

Harbans, on a visit to Tarn Taran from Gorakhpur, somehow got to hear about a “garbage baby” and her tale of survival. She approached Karanjia. Dimple, who was in Class VII, doesn’t remember much about the first meeting.

According to Karanjia, Harbans wanted to take Dimple back. “Being a mother myself, I could understand her longing for her child. So I allowed her to meet Dimple,” she said.

The girl visited Gorakhpur but came back in a hurry as Harbans and Sukhdev tried to assert their “rights” over her.

But Harbans wasn’t one to give up: she began pestering Dimple to agree to marry a Jat Sikh instead of the man she was engaged to, Jude Eric, a Christian.

Dimple and Eric, who runs a personal finance firm in Chandigarh, married two years ago.

“I was overjoyed when my ‘real’ mother met me. But she never expressed regret at having abandoned me. How can she have any rights over me?” Dimple asked.

To her, there seemed only one way to stop the “harassment”: by going to court.

“They were served with notices,” Dimple said. “They ignored the summons. The next date of hearing is July 20.”

Dimple said Karanjia had brought her up like her own daughter. “I was never made to feel unwanted ? or even that I was not her daughter. She gave me whatever I asked for; whenever I needed anything, it was there.

“Now, suddenly, my biological parents arrive on the scene and want to snatch me away from my mother and a very loving husband and do what they want me to do. They have no right to interfere in my life after what they have done to me. They had left me to die.

“Did I commit a crime by coming out alive from a garbage dump full of killer dogs?”