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AP busts major baby smuggling racket

Shireen in Hyderabad

A major racket in smuggling of infants to foreign countries was busted by the Hyderabad police after a raid on a creche at the posh Mahendra Hill area on Friday night.

Making a statement in the Andhra Pradesh legislative assembly on Saturday afternoon on the racket, Home Minister A Madhava Reddy said as many as 56 children (four male and 52 female babies) in the age group of one month to one year were rescued.

The creche is run by a non-governmental organisation.

He said the NGO, registered as the Good Samaritan Evangelical and Social Welfare Association, was run by one S Peter Subbaiah. With its headquarters at Satyavedu in Chittoor district, the association has been running the creche at a two-storeyed building in Secunderabad for the last year.

He said a preliminary enquiry has revealed that the association has been engaging the services of several 'social workers' to procure infants from various places.

The workers allegedly procured infants from poor families, particularly tribals and dalits, by paying Rs 2,000 to Rs 3,000 per child.

After lodging the infants in the creche, the organisers would get in touch with foreigners desirous of adopting children.

The workers were paid Rs 15,000 to Rs 20,000 per child.

After completing the emigration and adoption formalities, the organisers would sell the infants to foreigners for $ 2,000 to $ 3,000 per child.

"The organisation has been creating the relinquishment affidavits of the parents with fictitious names which amounts to forgery. With the forged documents, the family court was being persuaded to issue guardianship certificates in favour of the adopted parents in foreign countries," the minister said.

He said so far 17 children were sent to the United States of America and one to Denmark.

The police have registered a case under sections 468 and 471 of the Indian Penal Code against the accused.

S Peter Subbaiah and his associate Jyothi are absconding and the police have launched a manhunt for nabbing them.

The minister said a similar case was also registered under sections 370 and 372 of the IPC at the Halia police station in Nalgonda district.

One Margaret Sanyogitha, a resident of Secunderabad, who was working for a non-governmental organisation named Bud Blossom, was taken into also custody yesterday.

She had procured three infants from Nalgonda district on behalf of the Good Samaritan Evangelical and Social Association. The three children had been lodged at the Mahendra Hill creche.

Among the babies rescued from the creche on Friday night, 23 were procured from Nalgonda district, 20 from the Juvenile Welfare Board, Jaipur (Rajasthan), three from the Juvenile Welfare Board,Tirupati and the others from different parts of Andhra Pradesh.

Children brought from Jaipur were more than one year old.

The creche was being run in a rented premises. As many as 30 women attendants and a caretaker were employed. Separate registers were maintained for each child, mentioning all the particulars including their native places.

The association has been helping six other organisations in the state in arranging adoptions.

Subbaiah, who reportedly holds a licence from the central adoption regulation agency, is authorised to facilitate adoptions. But Subbaiah has been using illegal methods and even giving false declarations for getting passports for the children, the minister said.

Efforts are being made to identify the parents of the hapless children and hand them over to them, he added.

Earlier, a special team of the Nalgonda district police, which was detailed to nab the racketeers, caught a Lambada tribal woman, Safawat Kiree of Janareddy tanda (tribal hamlet) in Nalgonda. Through her, the police laid a trap for one of the workers, Margaret Sanyogitha, and then zeroed in on the city-based creche.

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