Delhi police bust NGO trafficking children

Kids were being sold in the name of adoption

An unregistered NGO involved in trafficking infants or toddlers by putting them on sale for adoption has been busted in west Delhi’s Dwarka.

The gang was reportedly involved in the trafficking of more than 20 children.
The south-west district police had been alerted about the traffickers by the Director of Women and Child Development Department after it received a complaint of illegal sale of children by the NGO, named Rashtriya Janhit Jansewa Sansthan.

The NGO operated from a flat in Dwarka’s Sector 16-B.

The police said investigations revealed the NGO was neither registered nor authorised by the Delhi government to put up children for adoption.

The police then sent a man and woman as decoy customers to the NGO’s office. They were assured by one Vinod Kumar that they could procure a child for Rs 4.2 lakh.

Kumar, who was running the office, even collected Rs 8,000 from the couple as registration charges on June 4.

The couple was promised “proper notarised documents” for the child's adoption.
Vinod called the couple on Monday and told them he had two children ready— a newborn and a two-year-old—and that they could choose one. The price, however, was hiked to Rs 5.5 lakh.

The couple agreed to pay the amount for the older child.

Two police teams were subsequently formed. While one kept a watch over the NGO premises, the other team of four members decided to follow the decoy customers.
As soon as the adoption formalities were completed, the decoy customers gave a missed call to the police team.

A raid was immediately conducted at the NGO’s premises and three persons, including a woman, were arrested.

The police also recovered a two-year-old child who was being sold. He has been sent to a child care home in the city.

“Interrogation of the suspects and the initial scrutiny of the documents revealed that children were procured through three ways—stolen, kidnapped or gotten through IVF surrogacy,” said the police on Tuesday.

Apart from providing notarised documents to the adoptive parents, the gang would also provide birth certificates which showed the babies as natural-born.