The parents of a baby that died 48 hours after birth in Howrah District Hospital refused to accept the body for burial, alleging that the hospital staff had swapped their baby girl with a dead boy some time between 6 pm on Saturday and 11 am on Sunday.

The hospital witnessed angry scenes around Sunday noon when Sanjib Pramanik, 28, and wife Tumpa, who delivered a girl two days ago, and their family members accused the hospital staff of replacing the baby with a dead boy of the same age.

?Ours was a girl. We saw it ourselves in the crib,? cried Sanjib. ?Now, they are trying to hand over the body of a boy. We demand to know the truth.?

Confronted with the angry Pramaniks and local people, who accompanied them and threatened to go on a rampage, the hospital authorities started a probe. ?It is a serious charge and will be addressed seriously,? said Mihir Kumar Bhattacharya, Howrah police superintendent.

Earlier, the hospital authorities had sent a memo (no. 8105, of December 4) to Shibpur police station, asking police to inform the Pramaniks that their baby had died and the body needed to be removed within the next 24 hours.

The memo, signed by ward master A.K. Bose, did not mention the baby?s gender. According to the complaint filed with the hospital, when Pramanik, of 40, Aprokash Mukherjee Lane, Shibpur, along with relatives, went to take custody of the body on Sunday morning, its gender had changed.

?I had last seen my baby alive and well on Saturday evening. Then it was a girl. When my wife delivered the child, the hospital staff informed us that we had been ?blessed? with a girl. So, how could my girl child turn into a boy and die in a matter of hours within the hospital premises?? Pramanik asked the ward master.

?The hospital authorities must know where my niece?s child is. I have no doubt that she is still alive, since she was born healthy,? said Milan Das, Tumpa?s maternal uncle.

?It is obvious that someone abducted Tumpa?s daughter and put the dead male baby in her place,? he added.

Hospital records, however, show that a premature male child was born to Tumpa on Thursday, at 12.40 pm.

The death certificate, signed by medical officer on duty Subhro Pal, states premature birth as the cause of death, which occurred at 10.05 pm on Saturday.