During the treatment, 3 more newborns died at the neonatal ward of Ajmer’s Jawaharlal Nehru Hospital, increasing the death number to eight since Saturday evening.

While five newborns died between Saturday evening and Sunday morning, three more have died since then, Prof B S Karnawat, head of the pediatrics department at JLN hospital said.

Karnawat added, “An infant, who was admitted on Sunday, was severely anaemic, while the second had septicaemia and a third child, who had weighed only a kilogram at the time of birth, had intestine infection”.

On Monday, to ensure 24-hour availability of doctors, district collector Gaurav Goyal instructed that the duty chart of senior doctors be pasted at various important locations on the JLN hospital premises.

Goyal held a meeting with the hospital administration on Monday.

He had constituted a committee on Sunday to investigate the deaths.

Rajasthan’s Health Minister Rajendra Rathore asserted that there was no lapse on part of the hospital, he gave assurance that action would be taken against the guilty, based on the report of the deaths.

The Congress has alleged that senior doctors were not present overnight between Saturday and Sunday morning when five infants had died within a span of eight hours.