Ghaziabad: The Ghaziabad police on Thursday arrested four people, including two women, for their alleged involvement in a child trafficking racket that supplied infant or newborn children to childless couples, the police officials said.
The arrests came in connection with the case involving the kidnapping of a one-year-old boy who was picked up by two unidentified men outside his house in Loni on August 4.
The accused are identified as Naved Ansari (19), a Loni resident; Afsar Ali (28) and Shaista Waseem (35) from Shamli and Sandhya Chauhan (37) from Muzaffarnagar.
The officials said that Shaista had contacted Afsar to arrange a one-year-old boy for a woman, identified as Ranjana (single name), who is a nurse at a private hospital in Moradabad.
Later, Afsar roped in Naved and allegedly kidnapped the boy from his house around 4.30pm on August 4 and fled on a bike. Fearing action from the boy’s family, the duo abandoned the boy at the house of a local woman and fled.
“With the help of CCTV footage, the boy was traced and the four suspects were arrested.Naved and Afsar were promised ₹25,000 each to deliver the child to Shaista, who would then send the boy to Sandhya in Muzaffarnagar. Sandhya had sent a picture of the boy to eight of her contacts, and one of these are a nurse in Moradabad,” said Siddharth Gautam, ACP of Loni circle.
Officials said Sandhya allegedly shared the boy’s picture with her contacts in Delhi, Bijnor, Moradabad, Roorkee, and Amroha, among others.
The officials said that Sandhya confessed that the nurse opted to get the kidnapped boy after she fixed a deal with a childless couple for ₹2.5 lakh.
The police also recovered pictures of several other infants and minors along with pricing details,messages and voice chats from Sandhya’s phone.
Officials said that Sandhya runs a marriage bureau in Muzaffarnagar and is in contact with couples who are childless for years.
“Sandhya also told us that the nurse in Moradabad had also provided an infant boy to a childless couple in Dehradun last year. The nurse is absconding, and is the fifth suspect in the case. The evidence of dealings, voice chats, and pictures of several newborns has been recovered from Sandhya’s mobile. These were shared between her selected contacts. She also said that the price and demand for a supply of infant boys having fair colour is high. With the revelation, it appears that it is a larger network,” the ACP added.
The matter will now be handed over to the human-trafficking unit of the Ghaziabad police.
Naved and Afsar were arrested from the Nishant Colony area and Shaista and Sandhya from near Khadkhadi railway station in Loni.
An FIR was registered under BNS section 143(4) (trafficking of a child) at Tronica City police station on August 4.