``The doctor just took their signatures and let them go. They were saying that it is better to let the children die after being given some treatment rather than killing the kids by leaving them here unattended,'' said a parent whose child was still in the ICU.

A day ago many of the parents who spoke to Express Newsline had pleaded for help. ``Our children are dying. We want to leave but we are stuck here. None of the doctors has visited us for the past three days because of Dussehra. Even otherwise they are vacillating and ambiguous about the condition of the children,'' they said.

``For nearly four days no senior doctor has been around. Just one junior doctor on duty is present and he or she carries out experiments on the children.'' ``Everything here is arbitrary and the moment we ask about the children, the nurses and doctors snap at us saying you are free to take the child and leave,'' a parent said, begging not to be quoted. ``Woh bache ko mar dalenge. Waise hi dekh nahi rahe (They will kill the child. Even otherwise they are taking care of it),'' she said.

One of the parents, an autorickshaw driver, said he had been spending Rs 400 every day on injections. ``We have spent Rs 10,000 so far. If we knew that this would happen we would have gone to a private hospital instead.'' One of the mothers who had stayed back said that her child was in the ICU as fluid from her body had entered the baby's stomach. According to the mother, the child lay unattended in filth for hours after his birth, exposed to the cold air. The baby is now dependent on artificial respiration.

On Sunday evening, no doctor was around and children in the neo-natal ward had been left to fend for themselves. A child whose bottle of glucose was exhausted had reportedly not been given a refill for nearly two hours. The mother panicked but in vain. Another woman, Rehana, fainted after being told that her child was dead. The baby's father, Mommeen, said the doctor had given no reasons for the death.

Yet another parent said the nurses had told him in the afternoon that his child was dead. When asked for the child's body a couple of hours later, she shouted at him saying the child was fine.

``They are insensitive to our misery,'' his wife said, still quite shaken by the false alarm.

While some parents wanted their child to be removed from the ICU and given to them, others were seized with fear about the condition of their child as they kept getting contradictory reports from the doctors each day.