Dr Anjanika -Mona Ambegaonkar's

Faceless father

In fact she'd opted out from the serial two months ago.

According to sources her baby was premature. She delivered in her eight month. "It was a c-section delivery. However, now everything is okay and the mother and daughter both are doing fine."

When contacted, Mona admitted that she had delivered, but refused to name the father. "Yeah, you can write about the fact that I have a baby girl. But I won't tell you the identity of the father until he admits it to the world," she said.

The grapevine on the sets of CID is that Mona was seeing Dayanand Shetty (Inspector Daya). An actor from the unit (requesting annoymity) offered, "everyone believes that Dayanand is the father of Mona's child. She has confided to her close friends. But he surely can't confess, because he is married and even has a kid from his first wife."

Previous link-up

The source further adds that Mona wanted a baby as her biological clock was ticking.

"This baby was definitely planned." The source also informs that when Mona's bulge began showing, she had no other option but to opt out of the show. About Dayanand being the father of the child she revealed, "Daya was earlier involved with Ashwini Kalsekar who opted out of the show only because of him."

He's married

Does the couple still in touch? "I am sure there must be. One can't back out so easily, after having a baby." hitList contacted Dayanand to find out if he would own up.

A cool voice answered, "I have heard people talking about Mona and myself, and people saying that I am the father of her child, but these are all rumours. I am married since the past six years and was never involved with Mona at any stage. We had hardly any scenes together."

We called back Mona with Dayanand's version. Instead of asking why we called him, Mona asked, "When did you call him?" When we told her, she said something had come up and she would speak to us after five minutes, but after that she didn't answer any calls.

vickey.lalwani@mid-day.com