Kolkata, Jul 14 (IANS): A nurse allegedly cut off the thumb of a eight-day-old girl in a state-run hospital in West Bengal and threw the body part into a dustbin to escape responsibility.

The baby, admitted to the Balurghat General Hospital on Friday with diarrhoea, met with the tragic incident on Sunday night with the nurse - in an attempt to cut a leucoplast to make a channel for administering saline - severed the thumb with scissors.

"I saw blood oozing out from the affected area and saw the thumb was missing," said the new-born's mother Mamoni Mondal, who called her husband.

Babla Mondal said: "When I confronted the sister, she said she had no idea about the thumb. I looked everywhere and finally found the thumb in the dustbin. Helpless, with the finger in one hand and my child in the other, I began pleading with the doctors to attend to my child. But none came forward."

After an hour, hospital superintendent Tapan Biswas came to the ward and asked the parents to take the child to the North Bengal Medical College and Hospital in Siliguri of Darjeeling district.

But that was not the end of their ordeal.

"At NBMCH, the doctors told us that it would be meaningless to admit our baby there as it did not have the infrastructure to do a plastic surgery on the child," said Mamoni Mondal.

The child has now been brought back to the Balurghat District Hospital.

Biswas said the nurse has been asked to proceed on five-day leave.

"I have received a report from the nursing superintendent. I will receive the probe report from the doctors on Tuesday," he said.

"All expenses for the child's treatment will be borne by us," he added.