On admission to Nirmal Hriday, the inmates were allegedly made to sign undertakings renouncing their claim to the children.
Ranchi: The staff at a Missionaries of Charity (MoC) shelter here allegedly worked in cahoots with nurses and guards of a local hospital, as well as unidentified middlemen, to operate the child trafficking racket uncovered this month in the Jharkhand capital.
A nun and a staff member at the Ranchi branch of Nirmal Hriday, a shelter for abused and abandoned unwed mothers run by Saint Teresa’s charity network, have been arrested for allegedly selling seven babies born to inmates over a year.
However, the police investigation so far suggests that the suspects, Sister Koncilia and Anima Indwar, were just two members of a much wider network where players at various levels oversaw different aspects of a well-oiled operation: From tapping a potential customer and taking payments, to handing over the baby.
On admission to Nirmal Hriday, the inmates were reportedly made to sign undertakings renouncing their claim to the children. The register to record their admission and departure failed to mention the details of the babies born to them.
Nirmal Hriday staff in Ranchi refused to comment when reached by ThePrint. A Missionaries of Charity spokesperson based in Kolkata did not respond to calls and messages from ThePrint seeking comment. This report will be updated when the organisation comments.
Cover blown
The incident came to light at the start of the month, when a team of district magistrates arrived for a surprise inspection at two MoC shelters – Shishu Bhawan, an orphanage, and Nirmal Hriday.
Everything seemed to be in order at Shishu Bhawan, but the staff at Nirmal Hriday reportedly requested the team to carry out the inspection on a later date, triggering suspicion.
Around the same time, on 3 July, a couple from Sonbhadra, Uttar Pradesh, approached the local child welfare committee (CWC) – a district-level agency under the collector’s purview, set up to rehabilitate vulnerable children — to report that a child they had adopted from the MoC for Rs 1.2 lakh was allegedly taken back on the pretext of “unfulfilled formalities” and never returned. An FIR was registered on their complaint.
It is suspected that the staff took the child back in view of the impending visit by the magistrates.
MoC had withdrawn itself from India’s nodal body for adoptions, the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA), in 2015, after the government made it easier for single parents to adopt children. It objected on the grounds that the rules would let homosexual couples adopt, something MoC said was at odds with its religious beliefs.
So, legally, it cannot put any child up for adoption. Even agencies that can face a cap of Rs 46,000 for domestic adoptions.
‘Approached in hospital waiting room’
Four of the seven couples who allegedly bought the babies from the suspects said in their statements, accessed by ThePrint, that they were first approached with an offer by staff — either a guard or a nurse — at Ranchi’s Sadar Hospital, where all inmates of Nirmal Hriday give birth. Three babies are yet to be traced.
The payments were reportedly taken by either Anima or a middleman, and the children handed over to the adoptive parents on the road. “In most instances, the babies were either given away on Kachehri Road (just metres away from the CWC office) or the Ring Road,” a police officer said.
A man who claimed to have bought a baby boy for Rs 52,000 told ThePrint that a nurse had approached him and put him in touch with Anima.
“The nurse told me that I can get a child in exchange for money… She told me that a child is about to be born, and I will be contacted as soon as it happens. A month later, I got a call and was asked to get Rs 52,000 and take the child,” he claimed.
“The baby was given to me on Kachehri road by someone I had not met earlier,” he said. “When I asked if I had to sign any papers, I was told to give the cash and take the baby.”
A woman who said she had paid Rs 50,000 for a child was contacted by Anima, who had allegedly been tipped off about her by a hospital guard.
“I had gone to the hospital to see a doctor and while I was waiting, a woman came and sat by my side. We started talking and she told me that she worked at the Missionaries of Charity. She asked me why I was at the hospital and about my family and children,” the woman said.
“It is then that I told her I didn’t have a kid. She told me that a guard had told her about my story and that I can have a child if I was ready to pay. I instantly agreed. The baby was given to me in 15 days,” she added.
According to her confession, a copy of which is with ThePrint, Indwar admitted the role of hospital staff in the racket.
Police have reportedly zeroed in on a few people involved in the handing over of the children, but they are yet to be arrested. Some of them have been made witnesses in the case.
Mothers offered money for children
An inquiry conducted by the Ranchi social welfare department revealed that women seeking admission to Nirmal Hriday were made to sign an undertaking giving away their child to the MoC and renouncing all claims to the child.
The undertaking, a copy of which is with ThePrint, also bars the women from ever asking about their children’s whereabouts.
The statements of 13 unwed pregnant women at the shelter, accessed by ThePrint, also suggest that they were offered hefty amounts and help to start a new life if they gave away their children for sale, a bid to keep them from blowing their cover.
“Who gives Missionaries of Charity the right to take such an undertaking from mothers? What they are doing is completely illegal and reeks of a conspiracy,” said Ranchi social welfare officer Kanchan Singh.
“According to the law, when a child is born in any of these homes sheltering unwed pregnant women who are either victims of abuse or abandoned, the organisation is supposed to inform the child welfare committee,” she said.
“The committee, in consultation with the biological mother, then decides if the child has to be put up for adoption,” Singh added.
“We now suspect that this undertaking… was taken from these women so that their babies could be sold. What else could be a reason?” Singh said.
“When we asked the Missionaries of Charity about this, they said they were not answerable as they did not take funding from the government. That does not give them the liberty to function independently of the commission or the social welfare department,” she added.
Shoddy records: No mention of babies
The register maintained by Nirmal Hriday on personal details of the inmates has added to suspicions about the operations at the Ranchi branch.
The details listed include the inmate’s name, address, age, name of the person who brought them to the shelter, discharge date, and ‘remarks’. There is no mention of when she gave birth, or the baby’s gender or name.
The remarks section just has vague statements: “The woman was fit and taken home by her aunt”, or “taken home by her neighbor”. Names and addresses of the people who are said to have taken the inmates home are not mentioned.
After the CWC and the social welfare department seized the register from Nirmal Hriday and matched its information with the delivery log at Sadar Hospital, they could reportedly not trace 57 children.
“There were 122 deliveries of inmates from Missionaries of Charity since 2016 at Sadar Hospital. We took the data from the hospital and matched it with the details in the register. We could match and locate details of only 65 babies while information of 57 is missing,” Ranchi CWC chairperson Rupa Verma said.
“The children should either be with the biological mother, at the hospital or the child care home. But if the child is not there at any of these places, then, clearly, the home gave the child away to someone,” she added, “Sold or given up for adoption, both are illegal as the CWC was not consulted.”
“We suspect this to be a bigger racket… We have sought data from Sadar Hospital about deliveries made by MoC inmates since 2015. We will then match it with our records and see if more cases of children being missing come to the fore,” Verma said.
“Once our inquiry is complete, we will file a complaint with police urging them to trace these 57 missing children and make necessary arrests,” she added.
Additional director general of police R.K. Mallick told ThePrint that police will take the investigation forward once the CWC files a fresh complaint.
“Till now we have arrested two persons and have traced the kids who were sold by them,” he added.
The CWC has also been asked by the state government to conduct a strict scrutiny of 25 shelters in Ranchi. Meanwhile, the social welfare department is also carrying out an independent inquiry, with a deadline of 15 August to submit its report.
In light of the trafficking racket, Jharkhand police have also requested a CBI inquiry into their discovery that six organisations associated with the MoC received Rs 927 crore in foreign funds between 2006 and 2018.
They suspect the funds may have been used for purposes other than charity, in violation of the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act.