India, Ganges: Newborn baby found abandoned in a wooden box floating in holy river

A newborn baby girl was found abandoned in a box floating down the Ganges river in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, according to CNN's coverage of the rescue. Boatman Gullu Chaudhary was near the Dadri Ghat river bank in Ghazipur city when he heard the cries of a baby and followed the sound to a box in the water.

Inside, Chaudhary found the roughly 21-day-old infant wrapped in a red cloth. The box also contained the child's astrological birth chart indicating her age, incense sticks, and an image of the Hindu deity Durga, according to CNN's report.

Authorities nicknamed the child 'Ganga' — the Hindi word for the Ganges River — after the name was found written on a piece of paper inside the box. Police were alerted and the baby was taken to a local district hospital.

A boatman praised for the rescue

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath praised Chaudhary's rescue and said the boatman would be made a beneficiary of all eligible state government schemes, according to CNN's reporting. Coverage of the aftermath, including from the Tribune of India, described Chaudhary being feted by state officials for the act.

What officials have not said

The available reporting does not identify who left the baby in the river or why, nor does it detail any investigation into the circumstances of the abandonment. Coverage instead focused on the rescue itself and the state government's commitment to care for the child going forward, which CNN's report described as an assurance to 'make complete arrangements for the upbringing of the newborn baby girl.'

What happened to the baby after the rescue

The infant was placed in the sick newborn care unit at the Ghazipur district hospital and put under state protection, according to Tribune of India follow-up reporting. Geeta Shrivastava, convener of the district's child welfare committee, said the child "would now be under the protection of the state." Chaudhary, the boatman, told the Tribune he had offered to take the child in himself: "I have a daughter and two sons. I could have taken care of the child, but the district child welfare officers have taken her to the hospital."

Uttar Pradesh officials went beyond general praise for Chaudhary in the days after the rescue: the Tribune reported the state government committed to making him "a beneficiary in all its government-run schemes" as its way of formally recognizing the rescue, on top of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's earlier public commendation.

Part of a wider pattern

France 24's Observers desk, in its own contemporaneous coverage of the rescue, situated the incident within a broader pattern of infant abandonment cases reported in India, without providing a specific national count for this session's retrieved coverage. That framing matched the CNN account's decision to focus coverage on the rescue and the state's response rather than on any investigation into who left the child in the river.

US In News compiled this archived account from contemporaneous coverage by CNN, with additional detail from the Tribune of India and France 24's Observers desk. It restores a story originally published on this site in June 2021; figures are as reported at the time.