Two doctors among six held for child trafficking in Vizag

Visakhapatnam: The Vizag city police on Sunday arrested two doctors and four others on charges of child trafficking. The accused had sold a newborn baby boy to a couple in Kolkata. They have been identified as Dr Patchipala Namrata, Managing Director of Universal Srusti Hospital in Vizag, K Venkata Lakshmi (Asha Worker), B Annapurna (Asha Worker), A Ramakrishna, Dr Tirmala, working at Universal Srusti Hospital and L Chandra Mohan.

Briefing the details of the case, police commissioner Rajiv Kumar Meena said that a widow from the Vizag rural area became pregnant after an affair. Knowing about the unwanted pregnancy, Dr Namrata, along with her agent Ramakrishna, took advantage of the woman's situation.

The doctor lured the woman under the guise of delivering the baby without any charge, took the woman to her hospital in the city, and got the baby delivered in March 2020. The woman gave birth to a baby boy. The doctor along with her associates sold the baby boy to a couple in Kolkata.

However, G Sarojini, an Anganwadi teacher, who knew about the pregnancy of the woman, questioned about her baby. When the mother couldn't give a satisfactory reply, Sarojini became suspicious and alerted the officials of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) and the Childline.

As the Childline started probing the matter, the doctor's associate, Chandra Mohan, brought the baby boy back from Kolkata and handed over to the Childline on March 20. The baby boy is now under the custody of Sishu Gruha in Vizag.

The city police chief said that based on the complaint from the mother of the baby boy, they have registered a case and opened an investigation. The commissioner said Dr Namrata was running a hospital under the name Srusti Test Tube Baby centre that she later changed to Universal Srusti Fertility and Research Centre in 2018, after being named in two criminal cases. She had also opened branches in Hyderabad, Vijayawada, Bhubaneswar, and Kolkata.

She used to conduct free medical camps with her teams in rural areas of north Andhra Pradesh and Odisha and took the help of local agents and Asha workers to identify destitute women with unwanted pregnancies. They offered to help for free if the women agreed to give away their newborn.

After procuring such babies, Dr Namrata used to sell them to rich childless families through her agents. She had also impersonated the parents to get fake birth certificates from the GVMC. In this case, the baby boy was named Siyan Roy, the commissioner added.

"We arrested Dr Namrata in Karnataka and will also arrest the Kolkata-based couple who had purchased the boy," RK Meena added.