DELHI – The impoverished family of Indian conjoined twins won worldwide sympathy when they rejected the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi’s offer to pay for surgery to separate them.
They feared that one or both might die in the operation and could not bear to lose either.
Five years later, the girls’ parents are pleading with the Indian government to allow them to carry out a mercy killing to release the 15-year-olds from their increasing physical agony.
As their bodies have grown, Saba and Fahar Shakeel have suffered severe joint pain, blinding headaches, and the humiliation of increasingly slurred speech.
The twins are joined at the head and neck, but have separate brains. They have spent their lives close together but have never been able to look each other in the eye.
Their family does not know the exact cause of their agonies because no one can afford medical tests or treatment since they rejected the offer of surgery from Sheik Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan.