The baby-sale racket
in Kolkata has been as horrifying  as it
is direly criminal, if somewhat overshadowed by the crippling economic crisis.
It is shocking too that it took the police as long as it did to take the lid
off a pretty kettle of fish.

It is a racket that
extends from Baduria in North 24-Parganas to MG Road in downtown Kolkata in a
deftly coordinated  fiddle in which
gynaecologists, nursing home owners and staff, and criminal syndicates
masquerading as NGOs are alleged to be involved, not to forget the dubious
“adoption chain” and the huge spin-off.

If three newborns
could be rescued from a biscuit carton — prior to the scheduled sale — there
is life yet in the debate on the mushroom growth of spurious nursing homes and
NGOs.

The crime has
acquired a heart-rending dimension… with the mothers being told that they had
given birth to still-borns, and on a parity of sub-human reasoning, there could
be no contact between mother and child. Dr Benjamin Spock, who crafted the
seminal work, Baby and Child Care, must be spinning in his grave over the
machinations behind the thriving 
baby-sale.

The newborns are said
to have been sold off, but there is as yet no confirmation of when. Aside from
the newborns — declared as “dead on arrival” to facilitate the crime — as
many as 12 babies are reported to have been smuggled out from one nursing home
to another across the city… extending from Baduria to Behala, via the
arterial stretch of MG Road. On closer reflection, there is an intriguing
similarity of figures when one reflects that 12 people were arrested in two
days.

As it turns out, the
Baduria-based NGO is directly involved as a conduit in the adoption-chain,
though it ostensibly functions as a “welfare trust” to help the elderly. It is
a “trust” that the old and the lonely can well do without.

The crime is more
deeply embedded than what has been revealed in course of the investigations. It
spans a vast area, in part under the jurisdiction of Kolkata Police and in part
the Bengal Police, and it will call for coordinated action if the authorities
are to get to the root of the malaise.

The seizure of an
ambulance would suggest that these vehicles have been used to smuggle out
newborns from the nursing homes. Also to be probed is the role of the quacks
who persuade women to get admitted to certain nursing homes for childbirth.

The city and its
suburbs bear witness to the sinister exploitation of birth. Small wonder that
the National Crime Records Bureau data for 2015 reveals that with 1255 cases,
Bengal ranks second to Assam (1494) in terms of human trafficking. The baby
deserves better. It really does.