In a shocking case, crime branch on Saturday busted a baby-selling racket in Mumbai and held eight people, including six women, who were allegedly involved in selling babies under the garb of adoption. According to TOI, the accused targeted new mothers from economically weaker sections and offer to facilitate the adoption of their infants.
While baby girls were sold for Rs 60,000, boys were sold for Rs 1.50 lakh. So far, the gang has sold four babies in the last six months, however, the police fear that the number could be a lot more.
Acting on the top off that a woman is selling babied, Police sub-inspector Yogesh Chavana and Manisha Pawar took an action to arrest the accused. They launched an investigation and identified a woman named Rukhsar Shaikh who had sold a baby girl through Rupali Verma. Further probe revealed that another woman Shahjahan Jogilkar had also sold her baby through Verma.
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All the three women were interrogated at the police station, during which Shaikh revealed that in 2019, Verma had helped sell her baby girl for Rs 60,000 and recently her newborn boy for Rs 1.5 lakh/ Jogilkar said she too had sold her newborn son for Rs 60,000 to a family in Dharavi.
During interrogation, Verma named two other persons- Heena Khan and Nisha Ahire- who acted as sub-agents.
Subsequently, Rukshar Shaikh, Nisha Ahire, Heena Khan, Arti Singh, Rupali Verma, Geetanjali Gaikwad, Shahjahan Jogilkar, and Sanjay Padam were booked under the Indian Penal Code sections of human trafficking and the Juvenile Justice Act. Singh is a lab technician and Verma is an ‘agent’. Khan and Ahire were ‘sub-agents’ in the baby-selling racket.
