A farm labourer couple from Firozpur in Punjab gave away their newborn daughter in the hope that she would find a loving home away from poverty. Instead, she ended up in the hands of child traffickers and was almost sold for Rs 25 lakh in Gujarat. The girl, now 17-days-old, is fighting for her life with multiple health complications in hospital.
Gujarat police on Monday traced and brought to Vadodara the couple believed to be the biological parents of the newborn girl rescued by the SHE Team before she could be sold at the railway station in that city on September 4. The alleged birth parents, Mithun Singh and Shimla Rani, were named in the birth record found by the police.
Police said that the parents had ‘opted’ to give away the child for ‘adoption’ as she was their fifth daughter. The couple could not afford to raise one more child, especially a daughter. They have also allegedly given off another daughter, their fourth, to their relatives without going through the legal process since they are illiterate and appear to be unaware of the adoption laws.
Vadodara police had dispatched two teams to Delhi last week to apprehend the masterminds of the racket. One team visited Firozpur in Ludhiana and located the alleged biological parents.
An officer told Mirror, “The couple was brought to Vadodara on September 12. The wife was sent to SSG Hospital to be with the child. We have submitted blood samples of the couple and child for DNA testing and expect to get the results shortly.” However, police officials are confident that the couple are indeed the child’s parents.