MUMBAI: The city crime branch busted a baby-selling racket with the arrest of eight people, including a pathology lab technician.

Accordingly to the police, the accused would approach new mothers from economically weaker sections and offer to facilitate the ‘adoption’ of their babies for a price—Rs 60,000 for a newborn girl, and Rs 1.5 lakh for a boy. Preliminary investigations indicate that the gang sold four babies in the last six months, but the police suspect the number could be much higher.

Among those arrested on Saturday were Arti Singh, Rupali Verma, Rukshar Shaikh, Nisha Ahire, Heena Khan, Geetanjali Gaikwad, Shahjahan Jogilkar, and Sanjay Padam. Singh, a lab technician, and Verma were ‘agents’, while Khan and Ahire were ‘sub-agents’ in the baby-selling racket.

The police seized eight mobile phones from the accused. They hope to trace the babies sold to families in Mumbai and Pune from the photographs and WhatsApp chats retrieved from the phones.

The police have also sought the call detail records of the arrested accused, who have been booked under the Indian Penal Code sections of human trafficking and the Juvenile Justice Act.

It is one of the comparatively unknown chapters of the National Socialist dictatorship: in several European countries the SS had children stolen in order to have them "Germanized" in the care of the so-called Lebensborn Association. Thousands of families were affected by this brutal policy of "Germanization", many of the children still do not know their true origins.

DISPLAY

Those affected who are still alive are not officially recognized as victims of Nazi tyranny in Germany . But that should finally change - if it is up to the will of children who were abducted: The association »Robbery Children - Forgotten Children« from Freiburg is now calling in a letter to members of the Bundestag that »Lebensborn« children are legally victims of National Socialism to acknowledge.

According to the letter that is available to SPIEGEL, this should go hand in hand with a claim for compensation for those who were once abducted. Anyone who is officially a victim of the first German dictatorship in Germany can receive benefits according to the so-called guidelines on hardship payments to victims of National Socialist injustice.

ANZEIGE

When I found out that I’m getting adopted to another family, I didn’t understand what they meant. Few days later Amma, who was the head of the hostel, said that my sisters and I were going to meet our new mom. I understood then that I was getting a family. I wasn’t excited to meet my new family, but I just pretended to be because I didn’t want them to think that I was not happy to see them.

One April afternoon, we left to meet our new mom. I was nervous. When we arrived, I saw a woman wearing a beautiful saree. She came towards us and I said, “Hi Ma’am.” She smiled. Then I said “Mom?” She said yes. She introduced herself, “Namaste, I am Rama, your new mom.” She sounded friendly. However, because she was wearing glasses and had short hair, I was afraid that she may be strict. She reminded me of a woman I knew who was very mean to everyone in the first hostel we stayed at.

When we went to a separate room to talk, our new mom asked, “What do you like to do?” I said, “I like to play with the kitchen set.” I used to love to pretend play. It was so much fun to cook, pretend to be a parent and send kids to school. Our new mom got a delicious biscuit which we all shared and talked about other things for a while. She asked us about the things we don’t like, and I replied, “I don’t like it when adults fight.” I don’t think any kid likes it when their parents fight. They get scared and sometimes, it becomes traumatic and haunts them for the rest of their lives.

Sometime later, she showed us her husband’s photo. We were shocked! My sisters and I had never ever seen a white man or woman in our lives and there he was in the picture!

I imagined his whole family looking white, it was like he had put so much powder on his face; that’s what some people do in India. I asked our new mom, “When are we going with you?” I wanted to make sure how much time I had with my friends in the hostel. She answered, “As soon as the paperwork is done.” We had a good time talking and sharing things about our lives. I felt happy because she wanted to know about my life, my likes, and dislikes.

MUMBAI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Police in Mumbai have charged nine alleged members of a baby-trafficking ring - among them a nurse at a maternity hospital and agents who operated in the impoverished slums of India’s financial capital, officials said on Monday.

In the second such case in the city in five years, the nine are accused of having bought and sold at least seven babies over a six-year period.

The mothers of three infants and a man who had bought a baby were also arrested in a four-day police operation.

“We’re now investigating how many more children have they sold and if there are more agents operating in the area,” said police inspector Yogesh Chavan, who received a tip-off about the baby-trafficking racket last week.

“The mothers of the babies were poor and the buyers were couples desperate for a child,” he said.

YAOUNDE - Cameroon police said Saturday they have opened investigations into a network of traffickers who allegedly buy babies from the central African state to sell in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Some members of the network, believed to have illegally sold scores of children, were arrested Saturday in Cameroon’s capital, Yaoundé, with babies they had bought and a mother who said she wanted to sell her unborn child because she is poor. The mother was also arrested.

Baudouin Gweha, senior official of the Gendarmerie post at Mimboman, a Yaoundé neighborhood, says he arrested 41-year-old Pierre Essola for carrying out an activity that violates human dignity.

Essola tells Cameroon police that all negotiations with potential buyers and sellers of babies are by telephone.

He says he found a Congolese woman on social media who was offering to help teenage and single mothers to take care of their newborn babies. He says he immediately contacted the Congolese women through WhatsApp and told her that many young girls with unwanted pregnancies in Cameroon need help. He says he recorded and sent videos of poor teenage mothers to the woman in Congo. He says while in Cameroon, the woman disclosed to him that she had another partner who helps her to buy babies from the coastal Cameroonian city of Douala.

Essolla said his intention is to help poor mothers, especially teenagers who abandon their babies on the streets because there is no one to help take care of the babies.

MUMBAI: The city crime branch busted a baby-selling racket with the

arrest of eight people, including a pathology lab technician.Accordingly to

the police, the accused would approach new mothers from economically

weaker sections and offer to facilitate the ‘adoption’ of their babies for a

price—Rs 60,000 for a newborn girl, and Rs 1.5 lakh for a boy. Preliminary

The inmates and management of Keshav Bahety Surjudaya Children Home at Gangabari

near Makum in Tinsukia district have reason to rejoice as two couples from Malta

OUR CORRESPONDENT

TINSUKIA: The inmates and management of Keshav Bahety Surjudaya Children Home

at Gangabari near Makum in Tinsukia district have reason to rejoice as two couples from

MUMBAI: The city crime branch has busted a gang of eight including six

women who were into selling new born babies.

Shockingly while the baby girls were sold for Rs 60,000, baby boy was

sold for Rs 1.50 lakh. Preliminary investigations have suggested that the

gang has in six months have sold four babies, but police suspect the

SEOUL -- Protesters with the phrase "death penalty" painted in red on their face masks chanted and erupted in shrieks as they counted down to the start of a trial at Seoul Southern District Court on Wednesday morning.

The crowd was waiting to see if prosecutors would upgrade the charge to murder for a woman whose alleged brutal abuse led to the death of her adopted child, Jeong-in, in October at the age of only 16 months.

Their cries were heard. Prosecutors, under criticism for being too lenient, raised their earlier sentencing recommendation from involuntary manslaughter by child abuse after forensic experts reexamined the cause of the death. A second sentencing trial has been scheduled for April 17.

"The key point of the revised indictment is that the defendant caused a blunt-force injury by stepping strongly on the victim's back, with knowledge that applying force on the victim's abdomen, which had already been damaged, could lead to death," the prosecution said.

The adoptive mother denied the allegations, saying she had "no such intention" to cause the victim to die, while admitting to some of the abuse charges, including the fracturing of Jeong-in's left collarbone and right rib.

Sisters allegedly forced to give birth by their killers so offspring could be sold to clients in Greece

By

Yannis-Orestis Papadimitriou

IN ATHENS

17 January 2021 • 5:48pm