Boy priced at Rs 3.2 lakh, girl at Rs 2.5 lakh: How traffickers preyed on women outside IVF centres

PALANPUR: "What would you prefer to raise—a boy or a girl?" Agents of a child trafficking gang would ask sobbing women outside IVF centres, who had just learned they could not conceive.A newborn boy was priced at Rs 3.20 lakh and a girl at Rs 2.5 lakh. Once the childless couple agreed, the deal was finalized and the agents made at least Rs 50,000 per child. These revelations were made by Rani and Shivarani, the two Secunderabad natives arrested on Sunday by Banaskantha police, which is probing the trafficking racket masterminded by Bodasu Nagaraju alias Murugan. The number of arrests since April 6 in this case has reached 10, including Murugan. "Rani and Shivarani worked with Murugan and his wife at a leading IVF clinic in Hyderabad. They earned around Rs 5,000-Rs 10,000 to get women for treatment. They later realized that selling newborns get them 10 times more," said Digvijaysinh Rathod, inspector, Banaskantha local crime branch (LCB).Rathod told TOI: "Rani and Shivarani would approach women who were unable to conceive naturally, offering a newborn boy for Rs 3.20 lakh and a girl for Rs 2.5 lakh to Rs 2.8 lakh."Rani was a widow, and she reportedly turned to child trafficking to pay for mother's medical expenses, police said.Babies were often trafficked within 24-48 hours of birth from Gujarat, Maharashtra, Delhi, and other states.Police also summoned representatives of Nova IVF where the accused were working as agents, said Rathod.Based on the interrogation of the seven people arrested earlier, the LCB tracked both women to West Marredpally in Secunderabad and nabbed them. Police also arrested Dinesh Rathod, a native of Danta, who had sold his five-day-old girl to the gang for Rs 2.80 lakh. A separate offence was registered for that and for a similar offence in Amirgadh.Police said the syndicate was well established in Hyderabad and Telangana's Sirpur-Kagaznagar region, where agents identified buyers and facilitated illegal adoptions.