Baby 81 Reunited With Parents After Court Rules on Dna Tests

The parents of Sri Lanka's Baby 81 returned home with their four-month-old son yesterday, two months after he had been swept out of his mother's arms during the tsunami.

The infant, called Abilass, was handed over to Murugupillai and Jenita Jeyarajah in a packed courtroom after a presiding judge said DNA tests had confirmed his parentage.

"Look how happy he is! He knows the scent of his parents!" Murugupillai Jeyarajah told reporters. "After returning to us, he still hasn't cried."

The excitement overwhelmed Murugupillai's father, 60-year-old Sinnaphurai, who fainted in the courtroom and had to be taken to the same hospital where his grandson had stayed.

The family left for a relief camp in eastern Sri Lanka, where they are staying in a modest, one-storey concrete house with other survivors.

The Jeyarajahs stopped at a Hindu temple to smash coconuts and fulfil vows made for the baby's return. Relatives joined them, chanting prayers as the father carried Abilass around the shrine.

The relieved parents also visited the rubble of their former home, in Kalmunai, on Sri Lanka's east coast, where the boy had been swept away in late December. He was later found on a beach among muddy corpses and taken to the Kalmunai hospital.

Once back in the Jeyarajahs' temporary home, Abilass, sporting a dark stain or "mottu" on his forehead to ward off evil, was placed in a cot on the tiled living room floor, while the parents proudly showed off their son to a stream of well-wishers.

Abilass's plight has become an emblem of the way the waves tore families apart.

More than 35,000 died in Sri Lanka. "We are very happy, but at the same time feel sad that a lot of people were killed on that day," Murugupillai Jeyarajah said.

Abilass, who was the 81st admission at the hospital, recovered his name, birthday and family after a court battle.

Eight other couples also tried to claim the boy. Only the Jeyarajahs filed a legal claim, but they could not validate the birth because their papers had been lost in the floods.

Even when all the other parents dropped their claims, the wait was not over. It was not until a DNA test confirmed that they were the parents that the barber and his wife could be reunited with Abilass.