Adoption Awareness Drive After Baby Smuggling Racket Busted In Bengal

New Delhi: The government plans to launch a public awareness drive in the country on adoption procedures to curb the buying and selling of children. The move comes after the police found stolen babies and infant skeletons during raids on charities, clinics and homes for the mentally ill and elderly in Bengal.

Thirteen babies have been rescued, and the remains of two other infants uncovered, in a series of raids in the state over the last 10 days, as police investigate a suspected international human trafficking racket.

Eighteen people, including doctors, midwives, owners of charities and clinics in North 24 Parganas and South 24 Parganas districts have been arrested, suspected of stealing babies from women who delivered at clinics, but told they were stillborn.

The babies were then smuggled by road in cardboard biscuit boxes and kept in homes for the elderly and disabled until they sold for adoption within India and overseas, say police.

Ministry of Women and Child Development said on Wednesday the discovery had prompted Maneka Gandhi to take action to stem the crime of baby smuggling.

“We are convening meetings to sensitise (the) public about adoption procedure as laid down by law to avoid such heinous incidents,” said the statement posted on the ministry’s Facebook page and on its Twitter account.

The social media post also included photographs of some of the rescued babies, all under 10 months old, lying in the intensive care unit of a local hospital, where they are being treated for malnutrition, skin and respiratory infections.

In India, reports of human trafficking increased by 25 per cent in 2015 compared to the previous year, with more than 40 per cent of cases involving children being bought, sold and exploited as modern day slaves, government crime data showed.

There were 6,877 cases related to human trafficking last year against 5,466 in 2014, with the highest number of cases reported in the northeast state of Assam, followed by West Bengal, according to the National Crime Records Bureau.

Thousands of children are lured to big cities each year by traffickers who promise good jobs but sell them into domestic or sex work or to industries such as textile workshops.

Often they are unpaid or held in debt bondage in construction and agriculture sectors. Children are also abducted for slavery or for sale for adoption using fake documentation.