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.
‘TERRORIST ATTACK’: The convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri resulted in the ‘martyrdom of five of our armed forces,’ the Presidential Leadership Council said A blast targeting the convoy of a Saudi Arabian-backed armed group killed five in Yemen’s southern city of Aden and injured the commander of the government-allied unit, officials said on Wednesday. “The treacherous terrorist attack targeting the convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri, commander of the Second Giants Brigade, resulted in the martyrdom of five of our armed forces heroes and the injury of three others,” Yemen’s Saudi Arabia-backed Presidential Leadership Council said in a statement published by Yemeni news agency Saba. A security source told reporters that a car bomb on the side of the road in the Ja’awla area in
PRECARIOUS RELATIONS: Commentators in Saudi Arabia accuse the UAE of growing too bold, backing forces at odds with Saudi interests in various conflicts A Saudi Arabian media campaign targeting the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has deepened the Gulf’s worst row in years, stoking fears of a damaging fall-out in the financial heart of the Middle East. Fiery accusations of rights abuses and betrayal have circulated for weeks in state-run and social media after a brief conflict in Yemen, where Saudi airstrikes quelled an offensive by UAE-backed separatists. The United Arab Emirates is “investing in chaos and supporting secessionists” from Libya to Yemen and the Horn of Africa, Saudi Arabia’s al-Ekhbariya TV charged in a report this week. Such invective has been unheard of
US President Donald Trump on Saturday warned Canada that if it concludes a trade deal with China, he would impose a 100 percent tariff on all goods coming over the border. Relations between the US and its northern neighbor have been rocky since Trump returned to the White House a year ago, with spats over trade and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney decrying a “rupture” in the US-led global order. During a visit to Beijing earlier this month, Carney hailed a “new strategic partnership” with China that resulted in a “preliminary, but landmark trade agreement” to reduce tariffs — but
SCAM CLAMPDOWN: About 130 South Korean scam suspects have been sent home since October last year, and 60 more are still waiting for repatriation Dozens of South Koreans allegedly involved in online scams in Cambodia were yesterday returned to South Korea to face investigations in what was the largest group repatriation of Korean criminal suspects from abroad. The 73 South Korean suspects allegedly scammed fellow Koreans out of 48.6 billion won (US$33 million), South Korea said. Upon arrival in South Korea’s Incheon International Airport aboard a chartered plane, the suspects — 65 men and eight women — were sent to police stations. Local TV footage showed the suspects, in handcuffs and wearing masks, being escorted by police officers and boarding buses. They were among about 260 South
RSS