Visakhapatnam police bust inter-State infant kidnapping and selling racket, rescue 6 babies, arrest 17 accused

Visakhapatnam police bust inter-State infant kidnapping racket, rescue 6 babies, arrest 17 accused; investigation ongoing.

The Visakhapatnam city police have busted a racket involving the kidnapping and selling of infants by an inter-State gang. The members of the gang have origins in Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Telangana, Delhi and other States.

The special task force of the city police rescued six infants from two States (Andhra Pradesh and Odisha) with its special teams, and arrested 17 accused in the racket.

Speaking to the reporters here on Monday, Police Commissioner Shankhabrata Bagchi said that an investigation has been started to go deeper into the racket based on complaints lodged at Gajuwaka Police Station and Three Town Police Station in the city last week. “Finally, we concluded that these gangs had their origins in different States,” he said.

The task force team caught red-handed the two men who sold a five-month-old baby at Harbour Park near Jagannadha Swamy Temple in the city last week. After interrogating the accused, the police took seven other accomplices into custody and registered cases against them under Sections 143(4) r/w 3(5) of the BNS Act.

The police detained another person (a woman) from Vijayawada, who bought a 15-month-old baby from someone in Delhi, and tried to sell the infant to the people of Visakhapatnam through middlemen from Srinagar and Gajuwaka.

In further investigation, the police arrested two more persons from Kadapa, who were involved in the racket of selling children to those in need. The police seized the babies sold at Marturu village of Anakapalli district, Achyutapuram, and Pedda Narava in Andhra Pradesh, and Jeypore in Odisha. The remaining were arrested from different places, said the Police Commissioner.

“The gang especially targets minor girls, widows and the poor to illegally buy and steal babies. They sell the babies to others for ₹5 lakh to ₹7 lakh. These people buy children in Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Vijayawada and other cities, and sell them in Visakhapatnam and its surrounding areas,” Mr. Bagchi said.