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Four children were traced but suspects arrested say they sold three more. Police, however, suspect several more children may have been sold.

Ranchi: Tracking the children allegedly sold by staff at the local branch of Nirmal Hriday, a Missionaries of Charity (MoC) shelter for abandoned and abused unwed mothers, was reportedly no mean feat for the Jharkhand police.

It required an elaborate operation involving a door-to-door search by personnel disguised as NGO workers, technical surveillance, analysis of call detail records and local intelligence that led police to four children who were born to Nirmal Hriday inmates but allegedly sold to childless couples as part of a trafficking ring operated by shelter insiders, among others.

However, the two suspects arrested, Sister Koncilia and Nirmal Hriday staffer Anima Indwar, have reportedly confessed to selling three more babies, who are yet to be traced.

According to their statement, the babies were sold for Rs 45,000-Rs 1 lakh between November 2017 and April 2018, to couples from Gumla, Basiya and Ranchi. All seven are suspected to have been sold over the past one year.

The confession, which has been seen by ThePrint, was made during a second round of interrogation.

“This seems to be getting murkier. In one round of questioning, the accused confessed to have sold four children and assured us that there were no more. In the second round, they named three more,” a police officer said. “We suspect that this number will grow as further investigation is carried out.”

The alleged trafficking ring was unearthed earlier this month, and the investigation suggests the two arrested were part of a larger operation where players at various levels oversaw different aspects of the deal.

Meanwhile, the Ranchi child welfare committee (CWC) has decided that the children traced so far will be allowed to stay with the adoptive couples as they were found to have formed a bond with them.

The ‘control room’

The office of Shyamanand Mandal, the in-charge of Ranchi’s Kotwali police station, where the case has been registered, has become a control room of sorts.

It is here that a five-member team — also comprising three assistant sub-inspectors and a sub-inspector — has been at work going through several call detail records in order to trace the locations of the remaining three couples.

Describing the operation so far, a police officer said, “It seemed like an uphill task to trace these kids as we had minimal clues about their possible location. We carried out a door-to-door search as members of an NGO working for children and contacted more than 600 people before we finally reached the (four) couples who had bought the babies.”

“We… went to localities that we had had zeroed in on with the help of technical surveillance. We told locals we were looking for newborn babies to give them vaccination, medicines and toys… It was a time-consuming process,” he added.

‘Where Mary’s statue stands’

The first child to be traced was a baby girl from Simdega who was allegedly sold to a Hindu couple for Rs 50,000. In this case, police had neither the couple’s phone number nor their address. All they knew was that the couple had a relative in an area that had a small idol of Mother Mary.

“Now, we had to find that location, as there are many areas where these idols have been placed. We gathered information from our local intelligence agents and deployed teams to trace the couple. It was during our door-to-door search that a local gave us a tip-off about a couple he knew had recently adopted a child. This is how we reached the couple,” a police officer said.

The giveaway

The second child — a boy allegedly sold for Rs 50,000 — was traced to Morabadi in Ranchi with the help of a phone number received from the nun heading Nirmal Hriday. The number was then put under surveillance.

“The head of the home was aware of the contact details of the person who took the baby — a detail they had not mentioned in any of their records. This shows that the head was aware of the nexus,” a senior police officer said.

“After getting the number, we put it under surveillance and traced the couple’s location. The couple, however, discovered that we were on the lookout for them, so they kept changing their location, but we finally nabbed them,” the police officer added.

“The couple then submitted a statement saying they had bought the kid from Anima without any paperwork. They, however, added that they had insisted on following the legal adoption procedure but were threatened that it was their last chance to have a baby, which is why they took the child,” he added.

The MoC withdrew from adoptions in India – which are anyway capped at Rs 46,000 – after the government, in 2015, made it easier for single parents to adopt. This means the charity network cannot legally participate in adoptions in India.

Call detail records prove key

The third child, a baby boy said to have been sold for Rs 52,000, was traced to Kantatoli, Ranchi. In this case, too, police did not have either the contact number or the address of the couple to begin with.

The search for clues then led police to go through the call detail records of Anima, sister Koncilia and other MoC staffers. As they looked for numbers the staffers were in touch with when the child was sold, a series emerged.

“We finally got a few numbers that were frequently dialled for a specific period and did not feature in the list thereafter. We then traced the location of the users and zeroed in on the location of the couple,” a police officer said.

All kids back with the couples, but legally

Once traced, the kids were produced before the Ranchi CWC, a district-level agency under the collector’s purview, set up to rehabilitate vulnerable children. However, it was subsequently decided that the children be returned to the adoptive parents.

“We found that the children had grown emotionally dependent on the couples who had bought them. After recording the couples’ statements, we found they were in need of a child and were taking good care of the babies,” Ranchi CWC chairperson Rupa Verma said.

“So, in the best interest of the children, we gave them back to those couples,” she added.

However, before they got back the children, the couples underwent a thorough verification process and were asked to complete formalities to make the adoption legal.

“The babies were handed over on the condition that the couples will have to produce them babies before the CWC every two weeks for the next two months, so that we can be assured that the child is being taken care of,” Verma said.

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