Five held for trying to sell 7-day-old baby for Rs 6 lakh in Maharashtra's Thane

Thane: Police in Maharashtra’s Thane have exposed a human trafficking racket with the arrest of five persons trying to sell a 7-day-old baby for Rs 6 lakh, officials said on Friday.

Acting on inputs, the Anti-Human Trafficking Cell of the city police laid a trap near a hotel in the Badlapur West area on Wednesday night. They used a decoy buyer to confirm that a group was indeed trying to sell a newborn, an official said.

The gang was paid Rs 20,000 via UPI as token money, with the remaining balance of Rs 5.8 lakh to be paid in cash, he said. After being alerted by the decoy customer, a police team reached the spot and arrested all five persons who had come for the deal.

The accused have been identified as Shankar Sambhaji Manohar (36), who accepted the cash, Reshma Shahabuddin Shaikh (35), who had got the baby, Igatpuri-based agents Nitin Sambhaji Manohar (33) and Shekar Ganesh Jadhav (35), and Asif Chand Khan (27), an agent based in Mankhurd, Mumbai.

A sixth accomplice, identified as Sabina, is on the run and police are trying to trace her, he said.

A senior official from Badlapur (West) police station said, “The gang had connived to sell the newborn for Rs 6 lakh. We suspect this is part of a much larger scam involving the kidnapping and sale of infants to childless couples. We are trying to identify the biological mother.” The infant has been moved to a specialised care home. Police are also investigating whether a wider network of hospitals or nursing homes is involved in supplying newborns to traffickers, he added.