Tsunami 'Baby 81' identified through DNA

COLOMBO - Sri Lanka's three-month-old "Baby 81", who was found alive among tsunami debris and became a beacon for bereaved couples, is to recover his parents - and his name - after positive DNA tests, court officials say.

The plight of the infant, so-nicknamed because he was the 81st person taken to Kalmunai hospital on Sri Lanka's east coast after the island's worst natural disaster, caused a media storm after grieving families flocked to offer to care for him.

But his parents, Murugupillai Jeyarajah and his wife Jenita - who have already waited an agonising two months to regain custody of baby Abilash - will have to wait another two days for the courts to complete legal formalities.

"The parents have been ordered to come to court on Wednesday, when the baby will be given. They have to wait only two more days," said M.S.M Nazeer, Kalmunai court registrar.

The court ordered the DNA tests after 31-year-old barber Jeyarajah and his wife argued they could not prove he was theirs because his birth certificate and other documents were washed away by the tsunami along with their house.

The cherubic infant was put under police guard after Jeyarajah was arrested and briefly detained for trying to forcibly take him from nurses.

When a judge then ordered DNA tests, Jeyarajah nearly fainted and threatened to kill himself.

Newspaper reports have said nine women claimed the boy as their son in the aftermath of the tsunami, but police say the Jeyarajahs were the only couple to claim the baby as theirs.

Guarded by three armed policemen and court officials, baby Abilash was carted more than 200 km across Sri Lanka last week to a testing laboratory in downtown Colombo.

Wrapped in a pink blanket and propped on a nurse's lap, the child - whose survival was hailed a miracle in a disaster that killed nearly 40,000 people along the Indian Ocean island's shores - slept through much of the ordeal, blissfully unaware.

- REUTERS