Baby-selling racket: Police to send blood samples for DNA test

City police will send blood samples of four babies and their biological parents for DNA test after it lifted the lid on a baby-selling racket run from a private hospital in the district in Madhya Pradesh.
Police had raided city's Palash hospital in April and arrested its owner Taposh Gupta and director Arun Bhadauria for allegedly running a racket of selling newborn babies to childless couples delivered mostly by unwed mothers at their hospital.
"We are going to send blood samples of four infants who were sold off clandestinely, along with their biological parents who we have identified for DNA test," district Additional Superintendent of Police, Kumar Prateek told PTI today.

The ASP apprised that they have launched a hunt to arrest four to five accused in the case.
"We are piecing together evidences to prosecute the people who bought the babies as well," he said.
On the modus operandi, Prateek said the investigations so far suggested that the hospital and its agents used to mostly trap unmarried pregnant women, convince them to deliver the child in secrecy at their facility and then abandon them.

The hospital and their agents then used to sell the newborns for Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh to childless couples, the ASP said.
Asked about allegation that nearly hundreds of such deliveries took place at the now-sealed hospital in recent years, the ASP said they have not made any headway in this direction as the facility's records were fudged.

"But we haven't given up on this either. We are investigating the case from all angles. So far we have identified five infants sold through the racket, one of them is dead," he added.