KOLKATA, India: Two child protection officers have been arrested for alleged links with a trafficking gang that ran illegal adoption centers in eastern India selling children to foreign couples, police said Saturday.
Investigators said children aged between six months and 14 years were sold in illegal adoptions to couples from Europe, America and Asia for between $12,000 and $23,000 and taken out of the country.
While India has an estimated 30 million orphans, legal adoption is rare because of strict rules governing the practice and there is a thriving illicit market.
Police arrested two Darjeeling child protection officials, Mrinal Ghosh and Debasish Chanda, on Friday “for their links with the adoption scandal,” Nishat Parvej of the state’s Criminal Investigation Department told AFP.
He said three more government officials had “absconded,” as the widening inquiry into the adoption racket embroils political and administrative figures.
So far six people have been nabbed over the scandal, including Juhi Choudhury, a senior member of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party in West Bengal.
The head of the adoption center at the heart of the scandal, Chandana Chakraborty, told investigators that Choudhury had been involved in child trafficking for several years.
Police arrested Chakraborty, a retired school principal, and her deputy Sonali Mondal last month after a tip-off from the federal adoption agency.
The pair ran the Bimala Sishu Griha center where children were sold abroad through forged documents to couples for as much as 1.5 million rupees ($23,000).
Investigators said the scam had lasted for several years before they started monitoring the charity in June when federal authorities found discrepancies in their records and relocated all the children from the center.
Chakraborty allegedly ran health camps to identify poor and unmarried pregnant women and persuaded them to give up their babies for adoption after paying them.
Experts say lengthy bureaucratic delays and complex rules in the adoption process push desperate couples toward the illegal adoption market.
Only 3,678 children were legally adopted by couples in India between April 2015 and March 2016, according to official data.
The latest scandal comes roughly four months after police arrested 18 people in the same state over a racket that saw gangs steal newborn babies from nursing homes with the intention of selling them.
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India child protection officers held in trafficking probe
India child protection officers held in trafficking probe
Fire ravages Amsterdam church on ‘unsettled’ Dutch New Year
The Hague: A huge inferno gutted a 19th century Amsterdam church Thursday, as the Netherlands endured an unsettled New Year’s Eve with two dead from fireworks and “unprecedented” violence against police.
The blaze broke out in the early hours at the Vondelkerk, a tourist attraction that has overlooked one of the city’s top parks since 1872.
The 50-meter-high (164-foot) tower collapsed and the roof was badly damaged but the structure was expected to remain intact, Amsterdam authorities said.
The cause of the blaze was not immediately clear.
The head of the Dutch Police Union, Nine Kooiman, reported an “unprecedented amount of violence against police and emergency services” over New Year’s Eve.
She said she herself had been pelted three times by fireworks and other explosives as she worked a shift in Amsterdam.
Shortly after midnight, authorities released a rare country-wide alert on mobile phones warning people not to call overwhelmed emergency services unless lives were at risk.
Reports of attacks against police and firefighters were widespread across the country. In the southern city of Breda, people threw petrol bombs at police.
Two people, a 17-year-old boy and a 38-year-old man, were killed in fireworks accidents. Three others were seriously injured.
The eye hospital in Rotterdam said it had treated 14 patients, including 10 minors, for eye injuries. Two received surgery.
It was the last year before an expected ban on unofficial fireworks, so the Dutch bought them in massive quantities.
According to the Dutch Pyrotechnics Association, revellers splashed out a record 129 million euros ($151 million) on fireworks.
Some areas had been designated firework-free zones, but this appeared to have little effect.
An AFP journalist in such a zone in The Hague reported loud bangs until around 3am.
In Germany, two 18-year-olds died in the western city of Bielefeld when they set off home-made fireworks that produced “deadly facial injuries,” local police said in a statement.
The blaze broke out in the early hours at the Vondelkerk, a tourist attraction that has overlooked one of the city’s top parks since 1872.
The 50-meter-high (164-foot) tower collapsed and the roof was badly damaged but the structure was expected to remain intact, Amsterdam authorities said.
The cause of the blaze was not immediately clear.
The head of the Dutch Police Union, Nine Kooiman, reported an “unprecedented amount of violence against police and emergency services” over New Year’s Eve.
She said she herself had been pelted three times by fireworks and other explosives as she worked a shift in Amsterdam.
Shortly after midnight, authorities released a rare country-wide alert on mobile phones warning people not to call overwhelmed emergency services unless lives were at risk.
Reports of attacks against police and firefighters were widespread across the country. In the southern city of Breda, people threw petrol bombs at police.
Two people, a 17-year-old boy and a 38-year-old man, were killed in fireworks accidents. Three others were seriously injured.
The eye hospital in Rotterdam said it had treated 14 patients, including 10 minors, for eye injuries. Two received surgery.
It was the last year before an expected ban on unofficial fireworks, so the Dutch bought them in massive quantities.
According to the Dutch Pyrotechnics Association, revellers splashed out a record 129 million euros ($151 million) on fireworks.
Some areas had been designated firework-free zones, but this appeared to have little effect.
An AFP journalist in such a zone in The Hague reported loud bangs until around 3am.
In Germany, two 18-year-olds died in the western city of Bielefeld when they set off home-made fireworks that produced “deadly facial injuries,” local police said in a statement.
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