An underweight infant girl with scratches on her body was recovered from Ghurabandha jungles, 80km from the steel city, on Friday night, with the distraught parents of the newborn stolen from the state-run MGM hospital on Wednesday claiming she was theirs.

However the police is mulling a DNA test to ascertain whether this baby is indeed the one stolen by a middle-aged woman from MGM hospital on Wednesday afternoon.

A police team from Ghatshila subdivision's Ghurabandha police station reached MGM hospital around 10.30pm on Friday with the baby girl that they said a woman found lying in a dense jungle in Ghurabandha. As the Ghurabandha police knew about the stolen baby at MGM, they brought this infant straight to the hospital. Hospital CCTV footage established that the woman who stole the baby girl on Wednesday and the woman who found this infant on Friday were different.

Parents of the stolen baby, Chaibasa couple Horo Purty and Pangela, staked claim on the rescued baby. “It is our daughter. Our baby has come back, we need nothing else,” Horo Purty, 30, said on Saturday at the hospital.

However, the police have not confirmed anything. The rescued baby has been admitted to MGM’s neo-natal intensive care unit (Nicu). MGM deputy superintendent Nakul Prasad Chaudhury said the newborn brought by the police was underweight, about 1,500gm only, with scratches on her body. “As she was found in a forest, she must have been exposed to cold. Our first priority is to save her life.”

On whether this was the Purty couple’s daughter, Chaudhury said: “That’s to be established by the police. Medically, I can say identification can be established by means of a DNA test. If the police decide on a DNA test, we will do that.”

City SP Subhash Chandra Jat said they weren’t sure if this was the stolen baby.

“We are yet to decide whether to hand over this rescued baby to the parents who lost their baby from MGM. The stolen baby weighed 2.5kg, this one is underweight. We are may recommend a DNA test,” Jat said.

Pangela Purty had undergone a C-section operation to deliver her baby at MGM on Wednesday afternoon. A middle-aged woman, who developed intimacy with the family in the hospital, disappeared with the newborn when her grandmother had handed her over, saying she (the grandmother) had to go to the washroom. Police filed a case with Sakchi police against the unidentified middle-aged woman on the FIR lodged by Horo Purty.