A man holds skeletal remains recovered from the backyard of the missionary hospital in Ratlam. Picture by Prakash Hatvalne

Bhopal, Feb. 18: A 110-year-old missionary-run hospital in Madhya Pradesh today became a target of zealots after police dug up its backyard to discover buried bones of newborns and foetuses.

The Bajrang Dal alleged that the Christian hospital in Ratlam, a town 280 km west of Bhopal, was carrying on illegal abortions and had buried the foetuses to cover up the racket.

The hospital denied carrying out abortions and explained that the bones belonged to a handful of stillborn babies whose bodies were abandoned by their parents.

As Bajrang activists shouted provocative slogans inside the hospital compound, some demonstrators played up the number of bones discovered — about 400.

But district vaccination officer and child specialist R.G. Kaushal said the bones seemed to have come from “around three to four neonates or foetuses”.

The state’s BJP government, however, turned the heat on the hospital in a town known for anti-missionary violence.

The police detained the woman medical superintendent, P. William, with gynaecologist Venu Gopalan, sweeper Jagram and a few others on the charge of concealing birth by secret disposal of bodies.

State health minister Ajay Vishnoi struck an aggressive note saying the guilty would be punished severely. He kept mentioning that the bones had been discovered from a “missionary hospital”.

The Bishop of Ratlam, Laxman Mehra, defended the hospital. “The discovery of bones is not unusual. When stillborn children are delivered or after miscarriages, some parents do not receive the body because of economic reasons. The hospital has a standard practice of burying such bodies at a specific spot,” he said.

Under civic laws, though, hospitals are supposed to get unclaimed bodies buried at graveyards or burnt at cremation grounds.

The police said they had been tipped off to search the compound for buried bones. Bishop Mehra alleged that sweeper Jagram had been “set up” to malign the hospital.

Collector G.N. Malpani has formed a five-member expert panel to probe the matter and sent sealed bone samples to the state forensic laboratory in Bhopal. The hospital has been sealed.

Ratlam police chief Satish Saxena urged for calm, stressing that nothing had been proved yet.

Some missionaries suggested an “inside job” by a fellow Christian looking to avenge his disappointment over the award of a hospital contract. Others said the bones may have been buried in the compound by people “hostile” to missionaries.

Many residents tried to support the abortion-racket theory by citing how the sex ratio had fallen in Ratlam district — from 945 females per 1,000 males in 1991 to 927 in 2001.