A secret ‘baby farm’ has been discovered in India where ‘unwanted’ babies are sold and swapped.
Babies born out of rape or wedlock were being delivered at a private hospital and then sold for adoption for around £1,000 each, Times Of India reports.
Police raided the hospital on Saturday night following a tip off about the trafficking of infants at the 30-bed Palash Hospital, and rescued two newborns.
After the raid, five people were charged – including the hospital’s director TK Gupta – with ‘buying or disposing of any person of any person as a slave, habitual dealing in slaves, and buying minors for the purpose of prostitution’.
Prateek Kumar, from the ASP crime branch, told Times of India: “Three others have been sold to childless couples in Uttar Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.”
The hospital manager, Arun Bhadoria, who has also been arrested, told officers that the institution had agents in the area who would fetch girls carrying unwanted pregnancies. Apparently, when a woman would approach the hospital asking for an abortion, the doctors (or agents) would convince them to keep the baby, assuring them of a safe and secret delivery.
Bhadoria said that once the baby was delivered, the mother was discharged and ‘hospital authorities [would] start hunting for gullible couples’ who would buy the newborns.
In one case, a newborn girl was swapped with a boy, Bhadoria added. And in another, a couple had two boys, swapping one of them for a baby girl.
Police have said teams are currently being dispatched to look for couples who bought babies at the hospital, and other investigations are under way to rescue babies sold in the same manner.
What a frightening reality. Here’s to hoping that people running these disgusting institutions are caught and stopped.
