Tsunami Baby to Be Reunited With Parents After Dna Test

A baby boy rescued from the mud, debris and corpses left on the shores of Sri Lanka by the tsunami will be handed over tomorrow to the couple who had fought desperately for weeks to get him back, after a DNA test confirmed his parentage.

Eight other couples had claimed the boy as their own.

Nicknamed Baby 81 because the child was the 81st admission on the day he arrived at the hospital, four-month-old Abilash will be reunited with his parents, Murugupillai and Jenita Jeyarajah, court officials said.

"I am so happy, and I only have to thank God for giving my child back," Mr Jeyarajah said. "We've got the results for all our hardships."

The parents said they had been unable to sleep and had received counselling.

The saga, which has gripped the country, began in the coastal town of Kalmunai, where the boy was found. The Jeyarajahs were the only couple to file a formal case to keep the boy, but could not document it because their records were swept away in the tsunami.

A court ruled that the child must stay in the hospital in Kalmunai, on Sri Lanka's battered eastern seaboard, until DNA tests confirmed who his parents were. Escorted by armed guards, Abilash was sent 200 miles across Sri Lanka last week to alaboratory in the capital, Colombo.

At a hearing yesterday in Kalmunai, attended only by lawyers, the district judge unsealed the results, read them aloud and ordered the couple, hospital officials and the baby to appear before the court.

"The parents have been ordered to come to court on Wednesday, when the baby will be given," MSM Nazeer, Kalmunai court registrar, told reporters.

The parents have vowed to make offerings, including the killing of a rooster, to Hindu gods as thanks for regaining their son.

The family's plight had become a symbol of how the disaster had ripped into families.

In Sri Lanka, the waves claimed the lives of some 12,000 children, a little more than a third of Sri Lanka's death toll of 35,000.

During the two-month wait for their child, the Jeyarajahs, who lost all their belongings in the tsunami and have been living in a camp, wept, threatened suicide and protested.

The infant was put under police guard and the couple were briefly arrested after they stormed into the hospital to try to take their baby back.

Although they were allowed to visit the baby, they were banned from picking him up.

But while the story ended happily for Baby 81, aid agencies say many have not been so lucky. Figures collected by Unicef show that in the country's 400 relief camps, 1,079 children have lost both parents and 3,700 at least one.

Geoffrey Keele, a Unicef spokesman, said: "It has been a tragedy what they [the Jeyarajahs) have been through to get back their baby. But there are thousands of children and parents in this country who are suffering and we require a long-term effort to help."