Date set for tsunami 'Baby 81' DNA tests

The tsunami survivor known as ”Baby 81” and the couple fighting a court battle for custody of him were ordered by a judge to undergo DNA tests next Wednesday, and the results should be known within eight hours.

But the judge yesterday declined to change the date – more than nine weeks after the tests are conducted – that he would formally hear the results of the tests in court and rule on the couple’s claim that they are the child’s parents.

Judge MP Mohaideen’s ruling yesterday that he would reconvene the case on April 20 triggered an emotional melee in this eastern Sri Lankan town when the couple and supporters stormed into the hospital where the baby is staying and pleaded for him to be given to them.

The couple, Jenita Jeyarajah and her husband, Murugupillai, were arrested by police along with two supporters after scuffles at the hospital. They appeared before Mohaideen today to be formally released from custody.

At the hearing, Mohaideen said he had ordered the DNA tests to be done February 9 in the capital, Colombo, more than 124 miles west of Kalmunai.

“I have asked this couple to report to the DNA test laboratory at Colombo,” he said. “I have been told that the UNICEF will take care of the expenses and the transportation of the couple,” referring to the UN children’s agency.

The baby would also be taken to Colombo – an eight hour drive – under police protection.

Harendra de Silva, head of the government’s Child Protection Authority said yesterday that DNA testing of the couple could be completed within eight hours.

S.H.M. Manarudeen, a lawyer for the authority, said that once the tests are completed he hoped to file an application for the court to reconvene before April 20 so the case could be settled.

The plight of Baby 81 – so named because he was the 81st admission to the hospital on December 26, the day the tsunami struck – has become emblematic of the tsunami’s effect on families. More than 30,000 people were killed in Sri Lanka, many of them children.

Nine women claimed in the days after the disaster that Baby 81 was theirs, but only the Jeyarajah’s lodged a formal claim. But staff at the Kalmunai Base Hospital objected to the baby being given to the couple without a court order.