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The Rediff Special/Goa

Babies for a price

Sandesh Prabhudesai in Panjim

A major racket of selling abandoned infants has been unearthed in Goa, with the police catching a reputed gynaecologist red-handed in Margao, a district town of south Goa.

The raid conducted by the crime branch of the Goa police, which was tipped off by Bailancho Saad, a women's organisation, has shaken the tiny western Indian state.

Saad members posing as parents went to the gynaecologist, Dr Ajay Kudchadkar, to buy a 24-day-old child for Rs 15,000.

But Dr Kudchadkar, who has been running a maternity home in Margao for 22 years, has vehemently denied the charges and blamed "vested interests" of trying to malign him.

But the gynaecologist admitted at a press conference that he had "committed a mistake" by not informing the police that the child's mother had run away from the hospital within two days of delivery.

Claiming that the fake parents were only trying to give a tip to a nurse in his hospital when the police entered the room, Dr Kudchadkar said he did not find anything wrong in handing over abandoned children to couples on humanitarian grounds.

Ironically, Albertina Almeida of the Saad also does not find anything wrong in giving away abandoned children to childless couples, provided their background is verified and no monetary deal is involved.

But "the business is run taking benefit of the helplessness of unwed mothers who deliver children and also of couples having no children, where large sums of money are taken from both sides", said Sabina Martins, another Saad leader.

The root cause of the trade, however, is the lack of adoption law in Goa, which inherited several Portuguese laws after liberation. As only foster care is legally allowed in the state, some doctors are making a quick buck by signing fake birth certificates that change the parentage of the children forever.

While a few more cases have come to light after this breakthrough, the police are determined to get to the bottom of the racket.

Apparently, there are also cases where doctors have forced unwed mothers from poor families to sell their babies by humiliating them for their "lack of morals". Such women get little or nothing by way of monetary compensation.

Ominously, Saad members say most of these children are transported outside the country through unregistered agencies, and their fate is unknown thereafter.

The Rediff Specials

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