Andhra Pradesh man tries to sell baby to city couple, arrested

CHENNAI: A 25-year-old man from Tirupati ended up in prison here on Sunday after the city police arrested him in a lodge in Vadapalani the previous night for attempting to sell his 10-month-old daughter to a childless Chennai couple for Rs 1.5 lakh.
A team of police officers, acting on a tip, forced their way into a room in the lodge at 9.30pm on Saturday and even as Manoj, a salesperson in a mobile phone accessory store, was waiting for the couple to conclude the transaction.

They detained a second person, Mahesh, 27, also from Andhra Pradesh, for helping to broker the deal, an investigating officer said.

“Manoj and his wife Kavitha, 19, had been in dire straits for some time,” the officer said. “They did not even have the money to raise their older child, a boy of two and a half, and had given him to Kavitha’s mother to look after.”

“Manoj met Mahesh on a visit to Puducherry two years ago and they stayed in touch,” he said. “He went to Puducherry again three months ago, this time, with Kavitha. They stayed in a room with Mahesh, who had moved there temporarily searched for a better job. Manoj then proposed the idea of selling the child due to his financial problems.”

Mahesh took the idea forward and contacted people he knew, asking them to see if they could find a childless couple interested in obtaining a baby without any documentation — people who would not ask too many questions about the legality of the transaction, the officer said.

Kavitha did not know anything about the deal till she arrived in Vadapalani with her husband, he said.

“Mahesh’s acquaintances found a childless couple who offered to pay Rs 1.5 lakh for the child,” the officer said. “Mahesh arranged for the exchange to take place in the lodge on Saturday when we made the arrests.

Investigators on Sunday morning produced Manoj and Mahesh before a magistrate, who remanded them in jail. They will soon hand over the mother and child, now in the government home for girls and women in Kellys, to a child welfare committee.

“We are questioning both men to identify the people who were willing to pay for the baby,” the officer said. “It could well be members of an organ trading cartel.”