Government figures show currently 1,700 children are available for adoption in India, the world’s second most populous country with 1.25 billion people, while some 12,400 families want to adopt. About 3,010 babies were adopted in 2015/16.
Government officials overseeing adoptions said an increasingly long wait to adopt was closely linked to a rise in human trafficking in the country, with two baby selling rackets busted in India over the past two months.
“There are more such rackets (of baby trafficking),” said Deepak Kumar, chief of the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA), India’s main body to monitor and regulate adoptions.
“In India, we expect the pool of children available for adoption should outnumber the number of waitlisted parents, but there are touts and in some cases even agencies that sell children to childless couples.”
Under Indian laws children who have been surrendered by their birth parents or brought in by the police are declared legally free for adoption after various legal processes are completed.
This includes giving birth parents up to 60 days to reconsider their decision.
To ensure transparency, the adoption process in India went online last year with waitlisted families and the children available for adoption featured on a website.
But Kumar said traffickers often tried to get hold of these babies before the parents – often unwed mothers – made it to the government department to surrender the child.
Last week, police in Mumbai arrested a gang that was convincing single mothers – who can face social stigma or ostracization in India – to part with their babies then selling them to childless couples in various states across the country.
In West Bengal, police found babies were being stolen from women who delivered at clinics, with medical staff telling them their child was stillborn. Some were even given the bodies of stillborn babies preserved by the clinics to dupe them.
Officials said monitoring the waiting list for adoptions was one way to try to identify and track down the traffickers but they were aware that “bypass mechanisms” were taking root.
One adoption agency owner, who did not wish to be identified, said he often received calls from waitlisted families saying they had been offered a child from an unwed mother at a price and wonder if they should go ahead.
Two agencies in the western state of Maharashtra were recently shut down for selling babies for amounts ranging between 200,000 and 600,000 rupees ($3,000-$9,000), Kumar said.
Adoption experts suggested that problem areas of the country should be identified.
“It would help check the malaise if low adoption figures in certain states of India are analysed,” said Sunil Arora, president of the Federation of Adoptive Agencies.
Eleven people have been arrested on Nov 23,2016 in India on suspicion of duping single women into selling their newborn babies and trafficking the infants inside biscuit containers to an adoption centre to be sold on to childless couples, police said on Wednesday.
A senior official from Crime Investigation Department (CID) in the eastern state of West Bengal said the arrests began on Monday after police raided a private nursing home and found two babies hidden in cardboard boxes in a locked medical storeroom.
Those arrested included the owner, midwives and other staff at the nursing home in Baduria, 80 km from Kolkata.
Police have also arrested court clerks suspected of making fake documentation for the children and the head of a charity which ran the adoption centre.
“The inquiry is underway and more information will be revealed only after some more progress is made,” Bharat Lal Meena, Deputy Inspector General for the CID in West Bengal, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Staff at the nursing home and the charity were not immediately available for comment.
Police said initial investigations indicated that unmarried girls and women who visited the clinic for an abortion were persuaded by staff to give birth and sell their babies.
The police did not give a price, but local news reports said the mothers were given 300,000 rupees ($4,380) for a boy and 100,000 rupees ($1,460) for a girl.
Babies were also stolen from women who delivered at the clinic, but who were told by staff that their children were stillborn. Some were even shown the bodies of stillborn babies preserved by the clinic to dupe parents, police said.
The babies, mostly newborns, were then smuggled in cartons used to store biscuits, and taken by road to an adoption centre 25 km (15 miles) away in Machlandapur, where they were sold on to childless couples.
“It was a well organized syndicate, incorporating all kinds of helping hands needed for the smuggling network,” said another CID official, who did not wish to be identified because he is not authorised to speak to reporters.
The CID officer said more arrests were likely in the coming days.
Reports of human trafficking in India increased by 25 percent in 2015 compared to the previous year, with more than 40 percent of cases involving children being bought, sold and exploited as modern day slaves, government crime data shows.
The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) said there were 6,877 cases related to human trafficking last year against 5,466 in 2014, with the highest number of cases reported in the northeast state of Assam, followed by West Bengal state.
South Asia, with India at its centre, is one of the fastest-growing regions for human trafficking in the world.
Gangs sell thousands of victims into bonded labour every year or hire them out to exploitative bosses. Many women and girls are sold into brothels.
India, alone is home to 40 percent of the world’s estimated 45.8 million slaves, according to a 2016 global slavery index published by the Australia-based Walk Free Foundation.
