MEXICO CITY: Three doctors and a nurse have been arrested for allegedly selling newborns after telling their mothers they had died.

Police uncovered the scheme after one of the women learnt her baby was alive and had been sold to a woman for 15,000 pesos ($1240), said Mexico City's deputy attorney general, Luis Genaro.

The woman gave birth to a girl through caesarean section at the private Central West Hospital in a working-class district in October 2008, Mr Genaro said.

She had told authorities she heard her baby cry but when she asked to see the child, doctors told her she had to wait until the effects of the anaesthetic wore off. Later they told her the baby had been taken to another hospital.

A day later, the woman was told her baby died and had been cremated, Mr Genaro said. The woman learnt the truth in an email from a man believed to be the son of the hospital director.