Mumbai: The Kolhapur police has detained a Navi Mumbai-based insurance firm executive and his engineer wife over allegations that they bought an infant from a local homeopath, Dr Arun Patil. The child has been sent to a state-run shelter for children aka child welfare centre (CWC). The couple claims that they duly adopted the child even as the police suspects that the documents might have been forged. Meanwhile, Dr Patil is suspected of having sold at least 10 children, with the police having already arrested a Chandrapur-based couple and likely to call in eight other couples for questioning. Kolhapur police senior inspector S. Pawar prima facie said, “The Nerul couple bought a child in May last year. They have showed some documents to us which state that they have legally adopted the child.”
“The child has been sent to the custody of CWC of Kolhapur. We have traced the mother from whom Dr Patil bought the baby and sold to the Nerul couple,” he said. The mother hails from Sangli and is the minor daughter of a farmer who got pregnant due to a clandestine relationship. Some villager led her to Dr Patil who helped her deliver the infant, later selling it to the Nerul-based couple.
According to police sources, the Nerul-based couple got married in 2013 and had been childless ever since. Police sources said that they have sent the couple’s documents to a scrutiny committee of the ministry of women and child development, with a copy of the same sent to the office of Maneka Gandhi, union minister for women and child development.
Arrested accused: Kolhapur-based Dr Patil and his wife Ujwalla, would help unmarried, widowed and minor rape victims deliver babies at their nursing home, later selling the infants to childless couples for anywhere between Rs 8 lakh and Rs 10 lakh depending on gender.
