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.
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