Kannur: A banker woman weathered societal resistance and went ahead with her wish to conceive from her late husband, giving birth to twin babies after artificial insemination making use of his semen stored at a cryobank. The mother and the two baby girls are fine.

The bitter-sweet story came 15 months after writer-lecturer K V Sudharakaran died in a road accident, widowing Shilna, an employee with a bank in Kannur. The tragedy happened on August 15 last year when Sudhakaran, 38, was set to travel to Kozhikode after a teachers’ camp at Nilambur in Malappuram district. He was crossing the road, when a tipper lorry hit him.

Sudhakaran, an orator-activist and journalist, had married Shilna following a love affair. The couple have been undergoing fertility treatment since 2014. In 2016 and a year later, Shilna had conceived through IVF, but the pregnancies didn’t last for long. Then, on that Independence Day came the death news of Sudhakaran, a Malayalam lecturer with Government Brennen College at Thalassery.

Once she recovered from the emotional shock, Shilna expressed her desire to try once more to become a mother of Sudhakaran’s child. Not many close to her felt fine with the idea, but Shilna did get the support from her family. An expert team, led by Dr Shaijas Nair, led the treatment, as Shilna’s husband’s sperm, which was stored at the ARMC clinic at Kozhikode was deposited in her womb. As the pregnancy matured, she was admitted to the Koyili hospital at Kannur.

On Thursday, Dr Amar Ramachandran of the hospital carried out the surgery. The twins are healthy: one weighs 2.3 kg and the other 2.5 kg.

Sudhakaran, who was the Kasaragod correspondent for a Malayalam daily, had participated in the agitations against the harmful spraying of endosulphan pesticide in the hills of that district.

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