A Catholic nun working among the poor, especially Dalits, has expressed shock at the expo-sure of an infant selling racket in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.
Poverty alone is not the rea-son for the “rather unfortunate” racket, asserts Sister Manju Devarapalli, secretary of the National Dalit Christian Watch (NDCW).
The Carmelite Missionaries nun was responding to an April 6 report in the Hindu newspaper about poverty-hit mothers selling infants in Andhra Pradesh.
In two cases reported in Eluru and Mangalagiri in the first week of April, women stated that their family members had sold babies unable to care for them.
“Earlier, we have seen cases of childless couples resorting to illegal adoptions and purchasing babies. But now infants are put up for sale in the market by some gangs in the state. This is pathe-tic,” the report quoted a child protection officer as saying.
Sister Devarapalli, who is also a lawyer-activist based in Vijayawada, a major city in Andhra Pradesh, says the government and agencies should study the problem thoroughly and find ways to end it.
The report could only be “the tip of” a rampant malaise prevalent across India, not just in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana states, she told on April 7.