Two Russian girls switched at birth to live next door to each other

The maternity hospital of the town of Kopeisk in Russia's Chelyabinsk region is to pay three million rubles ($100,000) to each of the two families, whose daughters were switched at birth, Vesti.ru reports. Neither the doctors nor the obstetrician are going to incur criminal penalties: the statute of limitations on the case expired a long time ago.

The parents discovered that they were raising someone else's children only 12 years afterwards.

In case the maternity hospital of Kopeisk is incapable of compensating the parents, the fine will have to be paid by the municipal administration, Fontanka.ru reports.

The fact of the medical error in the families of the Belaevs and Iskanderovs surfaced incidentally. Mrs. Belaeva divorced her husband and filed for child support. The ex-husband refused to pay the child support having claimed that the daughter was not his. The woman demanded genetic expertise be conducted to prove her faithfulness. It turned out that neither the man nor the woman were the biological parents of their daughter. The woman went to police, and it was later revealed that the children had been switched at birth indeed.

The two families are not going to exchange their children now, Mayak radio station said. When they receive the money from the maternity hospital, they intend to build two houses next to each other.