Police in eastern India have rescued 13 babies and discovered the skeletons of two infants in raids on homes for the elderly and mentally disabled, as a probe into a suspected international human trafficking ring widened on Monday.
Ten infants, all aged under one, were found on Friday last week at a home for the mentally disabled run by a charity in the impoverished district of South 24 Parganas in West Bengal, while in another raid in the neighboring district of North 24 Parganas, the remains of two infants were found in office premises of a charity which runs an adoption center.
The raids come after the discovery of three newborn babies on Monday last week hidden inside cardboard biscuit boxes in a locked storeroom at a nursing home, where women would come to deliver or have an abortion.
Rajesh Kumar of West Bengal’s Crime Investigation Department said 18 people had been arrested for taking the newborn babies and trafficking them for adoption in India and overseas.
“It is a huge network of NGOs [non-governmental organizations], nursing homes, doctors and middlemen dealing in illegal adoption and baby trafficking that the police have busted. Our men are now building on the huge leads they have already got in this case,” Kumar said on Monday.
Initial investigations revealed that unmarried girls and women who visited the clinics for an abortion were persuaded by staff to give birth and sell their babies.
The police did not give a price, but local news reports said the mothers were given 300,000 rupees (US$4,380) for a boy and 100,000 rupees for a girl.
Babies were also stolen from women who delivered at the clinics, but who were told by staff their children were stillborn. Some were even given the bodies of stillborn babies preserved by the clinics to dupe parents, police said.
The babies were then smuggled in biscuit containers to adoption centers, homes for the mentally disabled and elderly people, where they were kept until their adoption was organized.
Those arrested included the owners of the clinics, midwives, doctors, owners of the charities, as well as court clerks, who are accused of forging documentation for the babies.
South Asia is one of the fastest-growing regions for human trafficking in the world.
Gangs sell thousands of victims into bonded labor every year or hire them out to exploitative bosses as domestic servants, or to sectors such as farming and manufacturing. Many women and girls are sold into brothels.
Kumar said one of the doctors arrested on suspicion of involvement in the baby smuggling racket had more than US$3,200 in US dollars, euros and Hong Kong dollars in his possession, suggesting the infants were being sold overseas.
“The seizure of this foreign currency is a definite indication that the racket may have its tentacles spread into foreign countries and foreign couples who were interested in baby adoption,” he said.
A Chinese scientist was arrested while arriving in the US at Detroit airport, the second case in days involving the alleged smuggling of biological material, authorities said on Monday. The scientist is accused of shipping biological material months ago to staff at a laboratory at the University of Michigan. The FBI, in a court filing, described it as material related to certain worms and requires a government permit. “The guidelines for importing biological materials into the US for research purposes are stringent, but clear, and actions like this undermine the legitimate work of other visiting scholars,” said John Nowak, who leads field
Brazil, the world’s largest Roman Catholic country, saw its Catholic population decline further in 2022, while evangelical Christians and those with no religion continued to rise, census data released on Friday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showed. The census indicated that Brazil had 100.2 million Roman Catholics in 2022, accounting for 56.7 percent of the population, down from 65.1 percent or 105.4 million recorded in the 2010 census. Meanwhile, the share of evangelical Christians rose to 26.9 percent last year, up from 21.6 percent in 2010, adding 12 million followers to reach 47.4 million — the highest figure
Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg was deported from Israel yesterday, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, the day after the Israeli navy prevented her and a group of fellow pro-Palestinian activists from sailing to Gaza. Thunberg, 22, was put on a flight to France, the ministry said, adding that she would travel on to Sweden from there. Three other people who had been aboard the charity vessel also agreed to immediate repatriation. Eight other crew members are contesting their deportation order, Israeli rights group Adalah, which advised them, said in a statement. They are being held at a detention center ahead of a
‘THE RED LINE’: Colombian President Gustavo Petro promised a thorough probe into the attack on the senator, who had announced his presidential bid in March Colombian Senator Miguel Uribe Turbay, a possible candidate in the country’s presidential election next year, was shot and wounded at a campaign rally in Bogota on Saturday, authorities said. His conservative Democratic Center party released a statement calling it “an unacceptable act of violence.” The attack took place in a park in the Fontibon neighborhood when armed assailants shot him from behind, said the right-wing Democratic Center, which was the party of former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe. The men are not related. Images circulating on social media showed Uribe Turbay, 39, covered in blood being held by several people. The Santa Fe Foundation
RSS