India Trafficking For Adoption UPDATED

” Police in India charged six people on Tuesday with selling babies to childless couples after smashing a trafficking scam in the commercial capital Mumbai.

But officers said they were still trying to trace the biological parents of three of the five babies they had rescued when they bust the gang last December.

The childless couples had paid 200,000 to 400,000 rupees ($3,000-6,000) for the babies – a price experts said reflected the long waiting list for adoption in India.

“We will (only) know if these babies were kidnapped or given away willingly after we find the parents,” Shahji Umap, a deputy commissioner of police in Mumbai, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“The police have not been able to find the parents so far. Now the court will decide what to do with the babies.”

Police said members of the gang, who face charges of trafficking and kidnapping, would convince single mothers – who can suffer social stigma in India – to give up their babies.

The accused – a 27-year-old man and five women aged 20 to 50 years – operated in the western and southern states of Maharashtra, Goa and Karnataka, police said.

Only one of the five rescued babies has been reunited with its biological parents. High court judges allowed another to be returned to the family accused of buying it.

The three unclaimed babies, all aged under one year, are being cared for by an adoption agency, but they cannot be given up for adoption until their parents are located or it is established they cannot be traced.

Welfare officials, worried about the uncertain process, said on Tuesday they would seek the court’s approval to put them up for adoption.

“This is the first time we have a case like this and we are at a loss as to how to go about it,” said Sharda Talreja, who heads the child welfare committee in Mumbai.

Experts fear baby trafficking is becoming a widespread and organised crime in India.

The arrests in Mumbai came weeks after police uncovered a suspected international child trafficking racket in West Bengal.

Some 13 babies were rescued and the remains of two infants were discovered in raids in the eastern state last November.

Reports of human trafficking in India increased by 25 percent in 2015 to about 6,877 compared to the previous year. More than 40 percent of cases involved children being bought, sold and exploited as slaves, according to government data.”

Indian police charge six people with selling babies for adoption

[DNA 3/7/17 by Roli Srivastava]

” A court here on Tuesday sent Jalpaiguri District Child Protection Officer (DCPO) Sasmita Ghosh, arrested for her alleged involvement in the child trafficking racket in the district, to seven days  CID custody, an official said.”

” “She has authenticated all 17 cases of child trafficking in the name of adoption by producing manufactured documents and signing on them. Thus she has misused the government machinery.

Bengal trafficking case: Woman official sent to seven days CID custody…

[India Live Today 3/7/17 ]

REFORM Puzzle Piece

Update:“BJP Rajya Sabha MP Roopa Ganguly, party national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya and two other leaders were today summoned by the CID for questioning in connection with the Jalpaiguri child trafficking case.

Hours after which the BJP national general secretary termed the summon as a symbol of “frustration and political vendetta” by the TMC government.

“A notice has been sent to Kailash Vijayvargiya and Roopa Ganguly and two others in connection with the child traficking case,” a senior officer of West Bengals Criminal Investigation Department (CID) told PTI.

“Vijayavargiya has been summoned to appear before our officers on July 24 while we will visit Gangulys residence for questioning on July 29,” he said.

He said that CID would question Ganguly over her alleged meeting with arrested former BJP womens wing general secretary Juhi Chowdhury, an accused in the case.

The CID had unearthed a child trafficking racket early this year in which babies and children were sold, some to foreigners, through questionable adoption deals.

Vijayvargiya said, “If they are serious about it, they should hand over the probe to CBI. But they are not serious about the probe.

“They only want to pursue vendetta politics, as TMC leaders have been summoned in Narada and other chit fund scam, they want to harass us. But the truth will come out and people will not forgive TMC.

West Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh alleged that the summon to Vijayavargiya and Ganguly was a conspiracy hatched by the Trinamool Congress to tarnish BJPs image.

“Though the prime accused has already admitted that she never met Ganguly and Vijayavargiya, the CID still issued the summon to them. This is absolutely unnecessary. It is because the TMC has failed to stop the BJP in the state they are using the CID. This is nothing but harassment of our leaders,” Ghosh told PTI.

The agency also summoned BJP leader Samik Bhattacharya to appear before it tomorrow in connection with their probe into the alleged scam regarding Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana that surfaced in the Basirhat area in North 24-Parganas district.

“There is nothing in the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana scam. The CID has no evidence against Bhattacharya and by issuing the summon they are trying to harass him also,” the state BJP chief said.

The CID had arrested several persons including the head of a child protection agency in Darjeeling and a member of a child welfare committee on charges of selling babies and children through questionable adoption deals.

These arrests were part of a widening probe into the adoption racket at the Bimala Shishu Griho, a childrens home in Jalpaiguri town.

Sacked state BJP womens wing leader, Juhi Chowdhury, and the chief adoption officer of the childrens home Sonali Mondal, the homes chairperson Chandana Chakraborty and her brother Manas Bhowmik were arrested earlier.

They have been charged with selling about 17 children, aged between one and 14 years, to foreigners by entering into shady adoption deals.

The CID had unearthed the child trafficking racket during raids at homes and nursing homes in Baduria area of North 24 Parganas district, in Behala in the southern fringes of Kolkata and some other parts of south Bengal in November last year. ”

CID summons Roopa, Vijayvargiya in child trafficking case

[India Today 7/20/17 by PTI]