A baby girl has died at a government hospital in India's northern Punjab state after doctors removed her from an incubator because her parents were too poor to pay the 200 rupees ($3.63) needed to keep her in it.

The baby, born prematurely with jaundice on July 20, needed incubator support to survive, state health officials said. Hospital authorities provided the incubator for two days but on Wednesday night asked Sanjiv Kumar, the child's father, to pay 200 rupees toward electricity charges needed to operate the machine.

Kumar, an unemployed house painter in Jalandhar, 252 miles north of New Delhi, did not have the money and was unable to borrow it. The hospital authorities removed his daughter from the incubator and she died a few hours later. "We begged and pleaded with them to keep our child alive in the incubator and that we would pay them the money later, but they refused," Kumar said.

He claimed that the nurses also removed the saline drip from the baby for nonpayment of dues.

The baby's mother Sunita told the Hindustan Times newspaper: "They killed my child. I pleaded that my husband needed time to arrange the money, but to no avail and the baby was taken out of the incubator."



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