According to crime branch officials, Sharma’s name surfaced during the investigation. Since Sharma was into the fertility business.

Mumbai: Mumbai crime branch investigating inter-state baby selling racket has arrested a Delhi-based fertility centre owner. The accused has been identified as Pawan Kumar Sharma, 43, owner of Unique Fertility Centre in Delhi. On Friday, he was produced before the court, which remanded him in police custody till August 28.

According to crime branch officials, Sharma’s name surfaced during the investigation. Since Sharma was into the fertility business, he was constantly getting demands for children. Acting as a middleman, Sharma gave two boys to different couples in Delhi.

Delhi crime branch has already arrested Neha Gupta, 24, a Delhi resident, for selling two boys to her relatives. The babies were given to Abhinav Agrawal and Rahul Gupta.

The police have rescued the two kids from them. According to the police, Agrawal has a 17-year-old daughter, and wanted a son. Neha sold him a 15-day-old male child for Rs 2 lakh. Rahul Gupta's wife was unable to conceive so he contacted Neha and bought a 14-day-old boy for Rs 3.5 lakh.

Visakhapatnam: The recent child kidnapping racket (https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/racket) bust in Visakhapatnam

city has revealed that the nine-member gang (https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/gang) kidnapped children

(http://www.speakingtree.in/topics/people/children) not for ransom, but instead to earn money by selling the children to

childless couples.

Investigations into the racket have revealed that the gang had kidnapped four children in the city since 2016 and had sold them

MADURAI: The Madurai bench of the Madras high court has handed over the custody of a child to its minor mother after

cancelling its surrender to the child welfare committee which had subsequently declared that it was legally free for adoption.

A division bench of justices S Vimala (https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Vimala) and T Krishnavalli

(https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Krishnavalli) passed the order after it heard two cases filed by M Meena

(https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/M-Meena), mother of the girl, and Paramasivam

In one case, the accused women had promised a victim to make arrangements for meeting her son whenever she wished, the police officer said.

MUMBAI: Police Monday claimed to have busted a baby-selling racket in Mumbai with the arrest of five persons, including four women, who were allegedly involved in selling children for Rs 2 lakh to Rs 4 lakh each under the garb of adoption.

The Crime Branch of the city police busted the thriving racket late last week, an officer said. Acting on specific information, Unit 6 of the Crime Branch raided a house at Sathe Nagar in Mankhurd and picked up a woman for questioning, said Akbar Pathan, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Detection-1).

On information provided by her, the police detained two more women from the same area who were allegedly involved in the baby-selling ring, he said.

The role of another woman came to light later, he said. Accordingly to the police, these women would approach new mothers from economically weaker sections and offer to facilitate "adoption" of their newborn babies for a price that ranged from Rs 2 lakh to Rs 4 lakh each child, he said.

Niklaus Samuel Gugger, who was adopted by a Swiss couple, visited Thalassery – a place he calls his hometown.

In 1970, when Anasuya gave birth to a baby boy in India, she told the nurse and the lady doctor who attended her not to tell her son about her, and ask him never to come in search of her. Forty nine years later, Niklaus Samuel Gugger, now an MP in Switzerland visiting Thalassery in Kerala – a place he calls his hometown – is happy he honoured his unknown mother’s wish.

“The lady doctor has passed away and the other woman is 84 years old. I respect my mother’s wish. She trusted the missionary hospital (where I was born) to find the best place for me. And they did,” Nik says on a phone call from Kochi. He has just reached Kochi from Thalassery. Before that he was in Thiruvananthapuram, where he was hosted for lunch by Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. Nik had hosted the CM when he visited Switzerland earlier.

Nik is on a holiday with his family, and Kerala is very dear to him. After leaving India as a four-year-old to move to Switzerland, he has come back to the country at least 10 times, he reckons.

“It is because of my parents – the Swiss couple that adopted me, Fritz and Elizabeth. They said we should never lose our roots,” Nik says. Fritz also made sure Nik remembers all of his childhood. With a Super 8 camera, he made movies of little Nik running around in Thalassery and at the Hermann Gundert Foundation where he lived for four years.

Welfare department officials found that every month, 'one or two babies abandoned mostly by unwed mothers'

bandoned infants are being found, dead or alive, with alarming regularity in the Jharkhand capital and child protection officials don’t seem to know how to stem the disturbing pattern.

Between June and December this year, 10 newborns were reportedly found along roads, in garbage vats or in drains and activists believe this is only a conservative estimate. While abandoning the girl child is quite common in the state, many of the infants are boys and hence, perhaps born out of wedlock.

The latest rescue took place on Saturday when members of social outfit Rebels Club heard cries of a baby at Idris Colony in Kantatoli under Lower Bazaar thana.

“It must have been around 7pm. We traced the cries to a gunny bag near an apartment. Inside it was a baby boy, barely hours old. He hadn’t even been cleaned properly. We quickly arranged for clothes to protect him from the cold and informed police,” said Arzoo Khan, a member of the club who runs a garage in the area.

Born in Udupi, Gugger was abandoned by his biological parents at Basel mission hospital and was taken to Thalassery, where he lived till he was four years old.

THALASSERY, KERALA: It was a trip down memory lane for 49-year-old Niklaus Samuel Gugger, an Indian origin member of the Swiss Parliament, who was in the port town of Thalassery, where he spent his early years.

Gugger today also visited the campus of Nettur Technical Training Foundation (NTTF) at Illikunnu where his adopted father was a teacher.

Dressed in the traditional Kerala attire of "mundu" (dhoti), the young MP, who was accorded a civic reception on Tuesday, said he was happy to be back in his "home town" where he had grown up till he was four years old.

Gugger was adopted by a German couple, who later shifted to Switzerland.

“The first woman we contacted for surrogacy (https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/surrogacy) fled after taking Rs 50,000.

The second one fled with our child,” said Dinesh Rawat, the father. According to Meerut police, the couple had hired a woman

— Kajal (name changed) from Meerut and native of West Bengal (https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/west-bengal) — for

surrogacy in 2014. “Kajal delivered twin boys in 2015 at a nursing home in West Bengal but told the couple that one of them

died during the delivery,” Vijay Gupta, Meerut Sadar police SHO told TOI.

AHMEDABAD: A local court refused to replace the name of a child’s biological father with that of the adoptive father on a birth

certificate (https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/birth-certificate), holding that it is the “legal right of a child to preserve his

or her identity, including nationality, name and family relations as recognized by law”.

This was after the woman divorced her first husband and remarried. A sessions court said, “It is not legal and valid to replace

the name of the biological father or mother with that of adoptive parents…”

From 1974 to May 2019, the Shreevatsa child care centre has sent as many as 3,209 children for adoption. Of them 2,478 were sent for adoption to Indian couples, while 731 were sent for adoption to couples abroad, Sayed said.

It was a medley of nervousness and excitement at Pune’s Shreevatsa Child Care Centre on Monday as Vibha Sofie Medin met her biological mother for the first time. Raised by a Swedish couple after she was adopted 30 years ago, Vibha had never expected to meet her biological mother until she started facing medical complications while she was expecting her fourth child.

For the first few moments, Vibha stood in silence, allowing the reality of meeting her biological mother (who preferred anonymity) to sink in. Pointing out the similarities in their appearances, it was her biological mother who spoke first: “Can I touch her? Can I give her a hug?”

While neither of them speaks a common language, the feeling of not being able to express themselves slowly faded away. Her biological mother watched in awe, as Jonas Olsson, Vibha’s husband, showed her pictures of their house back in Sweden.

Vibha works as a nurse at an old-age home and Jonas works as a business manager. They have been living together for 10 years and have been married for five. The couple has four children – Liam (9), Leo (7), Hedwig (3) and seven-month-old Helge.