Infants sold in 'Baccha Baazar' like potatoes, tomatoes: Court

Selling children in the garb of adoption is illegal, a Delhi court has held while urging the authorities to make it an offence punishable under the Indian Penal Code.
"Children/infants are sold in adoption market/'Baccha Baazar' like potatoes, tomatoes and onions," Additional Sessions Judge Kamini Lau said, adding that a "big racket of illegal sale of children for adoption exists in many states".
She noted that baby selling and buying are illegal in many countries and came within the category of adoption fraud.
The court reaffirmed 21-year-old recommendations of the Law Commission for insertion of a provision to punish those involved in selling woman or minor with imprisonment upto seven years.

"Unfortunately in India despite a strong recommendation by the Law Commission in its 146th Report (in 1993) recommending extending of the scope of legal provisions so to cover cases where a woman or a child is sold, whatever be the immediate or ultimate objective of the transaction...Till date no steps have been taken in this direction by the Government of the land," the judge said.
The court passed the order in a case in which a-month-old girl was abandoned by her mother, who had handed her over to a hospital's mid-wife, and the infant was all set to be sold for Rs one lakh. The police laid a trap and arrested three accused in the case.

The police said some decoy women constables had approached the mid-wife claiming one of them was childless despite her marriage eight years ago and wanted to buy the infant.

As soon as the mid-wife agreed to sell the infant for Rs one lakh, the police team arrested her, it said.
The court, in its order, acquitted accused Anita, Santosh (mid-wife) and Islamudin (OT attendant at New Rohini Hospital) of the charges of criminal conspiracy, kidnapping, abandoning a child and trafficking of a person while observing that no matter how immoral the act was, still it has not been defined as an offence under the IPC.

The court, however, convicted and sentenced the trio to three months jail for the offence of cruelly treating the infant under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act.
According to the police version, on July 5 last year, Anita, Santosh and Islamudin conspired and kidnapped a month-old girl child from a hospital in Rohini in north west Delhi for exploiting her.