A homemaker married for 15 years has been arrested for allegedly “purchasing” a newborn apparently to save her marriage, she has told police.
She was childless.
Originally from a village in West Midnapore, she is said to have feigned pregnancy before her in-laws for the past nine months and came to Calcutta for the “child’s delivery” last week.
The police said the homemaker had told them that her mother-in-law had threatened her that she would get her son divorce her because she is childless. The homemaker said she had made the elaborate plan only to save her marriage.
The police said that acting on the leads provided by the women who allegedly helped facilitate the deal to “buy” the newborn, the woman from West Midnapore was tracked down to her rented home in Behala’s Parnasree. The baby girl has been “rescued”, the police said.
Six women — the homemaker from West Midnapore, the child’s biological mother and four others, who allegedly facilitated the deal — have been arrested and charged with human trafficking.
The police said the homemaker had allegedly paid Rs 4 lakh, of which the child’s biological mother, a resident of Anandapur, received Rs 50,000. The rest was allegedly divided among the other women.
“We received a complaint against a woman in Anandapur on Monday, accusing her of selling her newborn. She could not give any satisfactory response about who the baby was sold to and where the baby was. Based on her statements, we rounded up three women, all of whom had helped her strike a deal with a buyer,” said joint commissioner (crime), Calcutta police, Sankha Shubhra Chakrabarty.
One of the three women led the cops to the address of the homemaker who had allegedly bought the child.
“We found that the homemaker had come to Calcutta last week and rented a house in Parnasree, apparently hiding the truth from her in-laws. She said she had been using pillows to appear like an expecting woman and planned her ‘delivery’ in Calcutta. The plan was that she would return home with the newborn,” said an officer of the detective department.
The police said that during the investigation they found the woman from Anandapur gave birth to a girl at MR Bangur hospital on July 10.
On July 28, she left home with the child and returned two days later without the child. When neighbours asked her, she allegedly failed to explain. One of the neighbours alerted the police.
All four women who allegedly facilitated the child’s sale work in infertility clinics in the city, the police said. Two of them are from Patuli, one is from Haridevpur and one from Behala.
All six were produced in the Alipore court on Tuesday and remanded in police custody till August 3.
They have been charged under IPC sections related to child trafficking, sale and illegal possession of minors and criminal conspiracy and under the Juvenile Justice (Care & Protection of Children) Act, 2015. If convicted, they could be sent to jail for 10 years.
The police said they suspect that this could be “part of a larger racket of human trafficking that could be unearthed only after proper interrogation” of the accused.
The baby has been handed to a home run by the Child Welfare Committee.
A few months ago, a couple were arrested from Narendrapur, on the southern outskirts of the city, for allegedly selling their newborn to a woman.
