Two more babies rescued as sale racket reaches Delhi
MUMBAI: The crime branch on Saturday rescued two more babies and arrested four more persons in a child trafficking racket it
had unearthed last week.
Among the four new arrests was a woman who was a go-between.
Last week unit 6 of the crime branch arrested a gang of four women, including a private hospital-coordinator-cum-owner of an
IVF consultancy, Bhagyashree Koli, for selling baby boys born to poor couples for as high as Rs 5 lakh.
The police had then rescued two baby boys and even arrested two persons who had purchased the infants. The crime branch
on Saturday rescued two more babies from Delhi and Noida and arrested Neha Gupta, Abhinav Bhagwan, Rahul Gupta and
Julehuma Dalvi alias Huma Dalvi.
“While Abhinav had a daughter and bought a baby boy from this gang, Rahul is married for years did not have any child and he
too purchased the child from Neha Gupta,” an official said.
Investigations suggested that Neha Gupta was connected to Huma Dalvi, a prime accused in the 2017 child trafficking case
registered at the Wadala (https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Wadala) TT police. While the police were looking for
Julehuma Dalvi we found that she is the same woman arrested by Wadala TT police and was in Byculla
(https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Byculla) jail. The rescued babies have been kept under observation at Bal Anand
World Children Welfare Trust at Chembur (https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Chembur).
“Abhinav paid Rs 2 lakh to Neha to get a baby boy, Rahul paid Rs 3.5 lakh to Neha and bought a two-month-old baby boy from
Mumbai. We have successfully identified one of the parents of the child and are looking for the other,” senior inspector Aburao
Sonawane of unit 6, said. The police are also examining whether the parents were lured by some promise.
Last week the police had also arrested Amar Vilas Desai, a taxi driver who paid Rs 3.8 lakh to the gang for a boy, and
homemaker Bhagyashree Vinod Kadam (35), who bought another baby for Rs 2.5 lakh from main accused Bhagyashree Koli,
who works as coordinator in two private hospitals, one in the city and another in Kalyan, and runs an IVF consultancy service,
Little Step, in Kurla (west).
The other arrested people in the gang were Asha Lalita Joseph (35), who worked in a private hospital in Kalyan and was into
test tube babies and surrogacy, Savita Mangesh Sawant alias Salunkhe (30), who worked as a security guard at Shatabdi
Hospital in Govandi, and Sunanda Bhike Masane (30), who acted as a facilitator between the gang and the clients.
Explaining the modus operandi, an officer said the gang would identify poor couples who had just given birth to a boy in
government hospital and would lure them to sell their baby for a monetary consideration. “To mislead them, the gang also
forged stamp papers to look as if it was a genuine adoption,” DCP (crime) Akbar Pathan said.