Bibi with her daughter. Picture by Surajit Roy

Malda, May 20: One mother was driven by poverty, the other by the urge to have a child to call her own.

Parul Bibi gave away her eleventh born, a girl only four days old, to Noor Nihar, in exchange for her word that she would help get all her other daughters married.

Both police and the district administration are in the dark about today’s “exchange”, which took place just 11 km from here at a place called Satgharia in Englishbazar police station area. But rumours are rife about the “hefty sale price” Bibi and her husband Faizuddun Sheikh have received.

Nihar and her husband Noor Nabi, who have come all the way from Kulir village in Murshidabad district’s Salar police station area, however, had a different story to tell.

“We have been married 15 years and we were not blessed with children,” Nihar said, fondly cradling the infant. I have been looking for a baby to call my own for all these years. My prayers have been answered.”

Nabi, an ex-armyman, said he had heard about the birth of the baby girl from a retired colleague who lived in the same village. “We approached the couple and they were sympathetic towards our plight. They could relate to the vacuum in our lives and agreed to give us their infant daughter,” he said.

“We will file an affidavit in court and take formal custody of the child and all steps to legalise the adoption. We will leave Malda immediately after all the formalities are over,” he added.

Bibi, 35, and Sheikh, 40, have two sons and five daughters. They said they had lost their first, third and fifth born children, to malnutrition and starvation.

“The lord has been kind to us and gave us children, but we are poor and could not feed so many hungry mouths. We had 10 children. Two sons and a daughter died of malnutrition when they were around seven or eight years old. Even now, each day is a struggle to survive and the shanty we live in is no place to bring up children. We have five girls and two boys,” Bibi said.

“We have not sold our child. Yes, the baby’s new parents did promise to help get our daughters married, but we would have gladly given our child to them anyway,” she added.

Sheikh, a daily-wage earner, spoke on the same lines. “We go without food on many days, but god knows we did not sell our child. We know how it feels not to be able to bear children. It was sympathy and not greed that prompted us to help them.”

Simi Khatoon, the eldest of the seven surviving children, is 15. Frail and pale, she bears testimony to the family’s plight.

“What my father earns is not enough to feed all of us,” she said.

“We barely have enough to eat and never have the money to visit a doctor when we are sick. We are always ill. Doctors and staff at the health centre always turn us away. They tell us they don’t have the medicines that we require. At least my sister will be spared this fate,” she added

All these statements, however, have done little to snuff out suspicions of a “sale” from the minds of Bibi’s neighbours.

“The family has been acting very secretively for the past few days and have not been speaking to anyone in the village,” said Mohammed Alauddin, a villager with six children. “They can say what they want, but we know what is going on.”