Kidnapped babies

A more terrifying thought than children being stolen is who they are being sold to &how they could possibly be treated

Selling price for a baby boy is Rs450,000. For an infant girl, it comes down to Rs350,000. These are the amounts that human life was sold for by the child kidnappers recently caught for running an illegal adoption ring. The matter came to the fore when a complainant, who wanted to adopt a baby girl through this adoption agency’s Facebook page, was asked for cash in return. The ring was traced after this complaint and three women, all said to be lady health workers (LHWs), were arrested. Members of the illegal adoption ring are accused of stealing newborns from hospitals in Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Peshawar and then selling them under the cover of an adoption NGO. This is, of course, not the first time such a case has been reported. Children being stolen at the time of birth from hospitals is a fairly frequent brutal reality. But such matters related to human rights are rarely given the attention they need.

This particular case has several disturbing aspects; firstly, the newborns were stolen from hospitals in major urban centres. While these cities have mostly subpar medical facilities, they are still much better than those in smaller towns and villages. To have such criminal activity going on with impunity in these establishments, therefore, is highly troubling. While this particular case may have come to the fore, there may be, or must be, several such rings still operating that have not been apprehended yet. As LHWs, the arrested women were able to get easy access to infants. LHWs are government medical representatives and carry people’s trust. If medical representatives and even hospitals cannot be trusted, then who should the people trust? Incidents of infant-kidnapping happen across the world but we must think about how and why they happen with the ease and frequency that they do in Pakistan. Hospitals’ poor record-keeping, for one, is a key reason. Furthermore, adoption in Pakistan itself needs to be monitored better. A somewhat more terrifying thought than children being stolen is who they are being sold to and how they could possibly be treated.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 9^th,  2015.

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