A three-month-old baby girl is battling for life at a government hospital here after being allegedly tortured by her father.
Baby Afrin was admitted to the intensive care unit of Vani Vilas Hospital on Sunday after vomiting blood and having breathing problems and would be kept under observation for 48 hours, hospital sources said.
The baby's 19-year-old mother Reshma had filed a police complaint on Sunday, charging her husband Omar Farooq with beating the child and even biting it in her absence.
The man has been arrested. The woman alleged that her husband, a car painter whom she married in 2010, did not want a girl child and that once she gave birth to Afrin, was continually harassing her to bring in Rs one lakh as dowry and threatened to end their lives otherwise, police said.
She said she noticed her child vomiting blood on April 7 morning and immediately took her to Bowring Hospital, where she was treated for a day and referred to Vani Vilas Hospital, where she is now being treated.