Baby trafficking racket: CID exhumes body of two infants, rescues 10 babies
Kolkata: Hours after ten babies were rescued from an old age home in Kolkata, the criminal investigation department (CID) officials, on Friday, exhumed bodies of two infants from an NGO compound, which was allegedly involved in international human trafficking.
After questioning one of the accused who was arrested earlier in connection with the trafficking racket, the CID recovered the bodies from the compound of Sujit Memorial Trust at Machlandapur in Habra, a senior CID official said.
During interrogation, it surfaced that the culprits used to bury the babies, who died while being shifted from one hiding place to another.
“Several nursing homes, clinics and NGOs are involved in this racket and whenever babies died while being shifted from one place to another, these traffickers used to bury them in and around the places where they were kept," the CID official said.
"These babies were recently shifted by one of the accused in this case who is at large," the CID official added.
On Thursday night, the CID rescued ten newborns during a raid at a rehabilitation centre for the mentally challenged senior citizens in south western parts of Kolkata.
During investigation, it came to light that the racketeers duped mothers of the newborns, selling the male babies for Rs 2 lakh, while female babies were sold for Rs 1 lakh. The racket smuggled the newborns to other states and abroad in cardboard boxes meant for biscuit packaging.
The racket was run on a modus operandi in which the mothers of the newborns were told after deliveries that their babies were either dead or stillborn and they were denied the right to see them on these grounds.
Reena Banerjee, daughter of a co-accused Putul Banerjee was arrested while two women were detained during the early morning raid at the old age home, the official said.
With this, the total number of arrests has risen to 15, including seven women. The arrested have been booked under Sections 369 (kidnapping or abducting child under ten years), 370 (buying or disposing of any person as a slave) and 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) of IPC.
Meanwhile, the police have moved the rescued infants to safety and shifted them to ESI hospital for treatment. The CID was also conducting operations in various places of Baduria in North 24 Parganas in search of bodies of infants.
