Swapped at birth

Level 3 l Advanced
1 Warmer
What do you know about India? Choose the correct answers.

1. India has a population of 130 million / 1.3 billion.

2. The most widely spoken language in India is Indian / Hindi.
3. The capital of India is New Delhi / Mumbai.
4. The largest city in India is New Delhi / Mumbai.
5. The currency of India is the rupee / dollar.
6. India is north / south of the Equator.

2 Key words
Complete the sentences using these key words from the text.

resemblance distinctive attached encounter onlooker

overburdened recount cradle forensic guts

1. If you ____________________ a baby, you hold it carefully and gently in your arms.
2. If you ____________________ a story, you say what happened.
3. If someone or something is ____________________, it is easy to recognize because of being different from
other people or things of the same type.
4. If you don’t have the ____________________ to do something, you don’t have the courage to do it.
5. An ____________________ is a meeting, especially one that was not planned.
6. An ____________________ is someone who watches something happen but does not take part in it.
7. If there is a ____________________ between two people, they have a similar appearance.
8. ____________________ research uses scientific methods to solve crimes or other cases.
9. If someone is ____________________, they have more work than they can deal with.
10. If you are ____________________ to someone, you like them very much or you love them.

3 Find the information

Find the following information in the text as quickly as possible.

1. In which Indian state is the hospital where the incident took place?
2. When was the final police report released?
3. Which people do the Bodo tribe closely resemble?
4. What kind of test did the laboratory conduct?
5. When were the babies born?
6. How long did it take the hospital to admit its mistake?
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NEWS LESSONS / Swapped at birth / Advanced

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Swapped at birth
Level 3 l Advanced
Two Indian families opt to keep sons
who were swapped at birth
A mother’s suspicions led to a meeting, a DNA
test and finally, the truth – but by then, it was too
late to swap back
Michael Safi
16 January, 2018
1 Salma Parbin knew. Her husband would not
believe her for three months. The hospital would
take two years to admit it. But within days of
giving birth in March, 2015, she knew: the baby
she was cradling was not hers.
2 The way her husband, Sahabuddin Ahmed,
recounts the story – which has become national
news in India – the truth about the child should
have been obvious. Indeed, it had been staring
them in the face.
3 On the same day at the Mangaldoi Civil
Hospital, in the north-eastern state of Assam,
another woman had also given birth to a son.
She belonged to the Bodo tribe, an indigenous
community with a distinctive eye shape that more
closely resembles Tibetans than people from
the subcontinent.
4 “My wife said: ‘This baby has the same eyes
and the same features as Bodo people,’” Ahmed
recalled. “She was very sure: this child is not
ours; this child belongs to that family.” Ahmed
immediately took his wife’s suspicions to the
hospital superintendent. “The doctor in charge
told me: your wife has some mental disease,” he
said. “You should take her to a psychiatrist.”
5 The following month, Ahmed filed a right-to-
information request, asking for the details of
every person who gave birth at the Mangaldoi
Hospital that day in March. “The records showed
the timing of a baby who was born as my wife
was giving birth,” he said. The mother’s last
name was Boro, an alternative name for the
Bodo people.
6 Ahmed went twice to the village where the Boro
family lived. Twice he returned home without
speaking to them. “I didn’t have the guts,” he
said. In the meantime, Parbin told him she felt a
gap between her and the child, whom they had
named Junaid. “She was getting distracted and
distant. I reminded her continuously: this is our
child; we are supposed to take care of him.”
© Macmillan Publishers Ltd 2018
NEWS LESSONS / Swapped at birth / Advanced
7 The third time Ahmed went to the Boro house,
he left a letter. It was delicately phrased. “My
wife thinks our children have been exchanged,” he
wrote. “If you have the same feeling, get in touch.”
8 The note was an unwelcome delivery in the
home of Anil and Sewali Boro, whose son, Ryan
Chandra, had just clocked his sixth week and
whose eyes – larger than those of his parents –
were a source only of wry amusement. “I had
no suspicions the child was not mine,” Anil Boro
said quietly. “It was only when he came to
my place.”
9 Boro said he was swayed by the friendly tone
of the letter and, after ten days, replied with an
invitation to visit and quickly clear the matter up.
The same day, Ahmed and his wife took Junaid
to the Boro house for an encounter that had
become the talk of the village and attracted a
crowd of onlookers.
10 He knew instantly. “As soon as they put the
two babies together, I saw my son there. I saw
the resemblance,” he said. “I realized there
was a mistake from the doctor’s side.” Boro,
too, thought the mix-up was obvious. Yet he
resisted any question of exchanging the children.
“Whoever comes to my house, this is my child,”
he said. Parbin, on the other hand, became very
angry, Ahmed said. “She was not ready to stay
away from that child for one minute.”
11 Ahmed told his wife he was still unsure, that
the resemblance might be coincidental. But he
applied to a laboratory to conduct a DNA test.
The results came back after four months. “The
relationship between Parbin and Junaid was very
good,” he said. “She was feeding the child every
day. Slowly, she became connected. So when the
report came, she was not very much bothered.”
The report said the possibility that Parbin was
Junaid’s mother was zero.
12 Ahmed filed a police report and sought tests
on Ryan Chandra. Forensic work in India’s
overburdened labs can be a laborious process,
made longer in this case by police mistakes
that delayed the release of the final report until
November, 2017. “The report came back and
said, yes, the baby was exchanged,” Ahmed said.
But Parbin had changed her mind about returning
Junaid, now nearly three, to his biological
parents. “She’s very attached,” he said. “I also
love him a lot.”
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Swapped at birth
Level 3 l Advanced
13 In February, 2018, both families formally told a you don’t want to hear it’s someone else’s.”
court in Assam they did not want to exchange Asked whether he wished Ahmed had simply
their children. “I just wanted to find out the truth; dropped the matter back in 2015, he laughed
that’s all I wanted,” Ahmed said. He hopes to stay bitterly. “Perhaps that would have been best.”
in Ryan Chandra’s life and, possibly, to fund his
© Guardian News and Media 2018
education. But the truth has been less comforting
First published in The Guardian, 16/01/18
to the Boros. “I don’t like talking too much about
this,” Anil Boro said. “When your child is yours,

4 Comprehension check
Answer these questions about the text.

1. What specific feature convinced the Parbins that the baby wasn’t theirs?
2. What was significant about the name Boro?
3. Why did Ahmed Parbin return twice from the village without speaking to the Boro family?
4. How did Anil and Sewali Boro react to Ahmed Parbin’s letter at first?
5. What made Anil Boro change his mind about the letter?
6. What did he think when he saw the two babies together?
7. What did the results of the DNA test show?
8. What did the families tell the court in Assam?

5 Find the word

Find the following words and phrases in the text.

1. an adjective meaning living in a place for a long time before other people came to live there (para 3)
2. a verb meaning take official action, for example make an official complaint (para 5)
3. a two-word expression meaning expressed in a sensitive way (para 7)
4. an adjective meaning funny but not very pleasant (para 8)
5. an adjective meaning influenced by something or by someone’s opinion (para 9)
6. a two-word phrasal verb meaning solve a problem or a mystery (para 9)
7. an adjective meaning happening or existing by chance (para 11)
8. an adjective meaning long, difficult and boring (para 12)

6 Idioms
Discuss the meanings of the idioms from the text.

1. The truth was staring them in the face.

2. It was the talk of the village.
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NEWS LESSONS / Swapped at birth / Advanced

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 Swapped at birth
Level 3 l Advanced
7 Word-building
Complete the sentences with the correct form of the word in brackets at the end of each sentence.

1. Ahmed’s wife had her ____________________ about the baby. [SUSPECT]

2. Ahmed reminded her ____________________ that this was their child. [CONTINUE]
3. The child’s eyes were a source of wry ____________________. [AMUSE]
4. Ahmed thought the resemblance might be ____________________. [COINCIDE]
5. His wife was ____________________ and distant. [DISTRACT]
6. In the end, the children were not returned to their ____________________ parents. [BIOLOGY]

8 Discussion
• Discuss the pros and cons of returning the children to their biological parents.
• What would you have done in this situation?

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NEWS LESSONS / Swapped at birth / Advanced

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Swapped at birth
Level 3 l Advanced
KEY
1 Warmer 5 Find the word

1. 1.3 billion 1. indigenous

2. Hindi 2. file
3. New Delhi 3. delicately phrased
4. Mumbai 4. wry
5. rupee 5. swayed
6. north 6. clear up
7. coincidental
8. laborious
2 Key words

1. cradle 6 Idioms
2. recount
3. distinctive 1. The truth was very obvious.
4. guts 2. Everyone in the village was talking about it.
5. encounter
6. onlooker
7. resemblance 7 Word-building
8. forensic
9. overburdened 1. suspicion
10. attached 2. continuously
3. amusement
4. coincidental
3 Find the information 5. distracted
6. biological
1. Assam
2. November, 2017
3. Tibetans
4. a DNA test
5. March, 2015
6. two years

4 Comprehension check

1. the baby’s distinctive eye shape

2. It is an alternative name for the Bodo people.
3. He didn’t have the guts to speak to them.
4. They didn’t welcome it.
5. its friendly tone
6. that the mix-up was obvious
7. that the possibility that Parbin was Junaid’s son
was zero
8. that they did not want to exchange their children
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NEWS LESSONS / Swapped at birth / Advanced

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