Written by Vijay Kumar Yadav
May 28, 2024 01:10 IST
The rescued child has now been kept in safe custody at St. Cafferine Child Shelter, Andheri.
The couple received some money in cash and some via online payment. (Representational Image)
The DN Nagar police have arrested six people, including the parents of a one-year-seven-months-old toddler, in connection with a child-selling racket. The accused parents are poor, and through three mediators, they sold off the child to a 43-year-old individual, who is from a well-off family and is homosexual. He wanted to adopt a kid but didn’t consider the legal adoption process due to its tidiousness.
The rescued child has now been kept in safe custody at St. Cafferine Child Shelter, Andheri.
Malwani resident Mohammed Azad Shaikh, alias Badshah, and his wife Nazmeen allegedly sold their child for Rs 4.65 lakh to a Thane-based homosexual individual who has an event management business.
“This individual had told his colleague Sayeba Ansari, a transgender, that he wanted a child. Sayeba told another accused, Rabiya Parveen Ansari, who then asked her relative, Sakina Banu Shaikh for the same. Sakina, who lives in Bandshah-Nazameen’s neighbourhood, conveyed this to the couple. The deal was done and after medical tests of the kid his parents sold him to Thane individual,” said inspector Wahid Pathan from DN Nagar police station.
The couple received some money in cash and some via online payment. “Since the Thane-based individual has no one in his family except his 70-year-old mother, he was looking for a kid to adopt,” said another officer.
The bogus kidnapping case exposed their lies:
Explaining how the matter surfaced, Pathan said that the Badshah’s sister was curious about not finding the kid around. She even took kid’s parents to the Malvani police station, but anticipating trouble, the kid’s parents made a false story and told police that their child was kidnapped by a man who took their kids under the name of doing an ad-film shoot.
While probing the kidnapping case, the police found loopholes in the couple’s kidnapping story, and when the police put them under sustained interrogation, they admitted that they had sold their kid.
The accused Badshah has previous criminal cases against him. Police are checking if the accused couple sold their other kids in the past.
All six accused, including the Thane-based businessman, have been arrested under sections 370 and 34 of the Indian Penal Code and 80 and 81 of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, said senior inspector Rajendra Machidar of DN Nagar police station.
They were produced in court on Monday and were remanded in police custody up to May 30, inspector Pathan said.
© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
Comments