Kidnapping racket: Gang used to sell infants to childless couples

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

to childless couples across the state.

The kingpin of the gang is a 45-year-old woman—Bonda Nagamani—who also runs a sex racket. Nagamani and her boyfriend

Thammineni Sumanth Kumar started operating in 2016 and gradually started recruiting other members of the gang.

“Our interrogation revealed that this gang used to target children, mostly below three years, from the poorer sections of society

so that their parents could not lodge a police complaint or claim their children were kidnapped as they hardly had any

documentary evidence with them,” said deputy commissioner of police (DCP) (zone II), B Uday Bhaskar.

Members of the members operated by identifying themselves as volunteers from NGOs to the buyers and would claim that the

children were from orphanages.

“Our investigation revealed that they used to sell these children for between Rs 50,000 to Rs 1.20 lakh depending on the

financial condition of the buyers. The gang members were shrewd enough to carry out four kidnaps since 2016–one kidnap

every year,” added Bhaskar.

Nagamani would collect data on childless couples, while Sumanth Kumar zeroed in on the children they would abduct. The

gang would abduct the child after scouting an area over a period of several days. Other members of the gang would help

Sumanth carry out the kidnap and transport the children to the buyers.

Nagamani and Sumanth Kumar had previously been on the police radar in 2017 when they had kidnapped a girl from Arilova

area in Visakhapatnam city. At the time, sensing they were in trouble, they came down to the police station stating that they

had found the baby on the road.