Mother 'sold her newborn baby on black market'
A mother has been detained in Russia for “selling her newborn girl for $21,200 on the black market”.
In the third recent case of this kind, the alleged seller handed over her baby to a totally unknown couple one week after birth.
The mother, named Barnokhon Rasulzhan Kyzy, 23, then wrote out a receipt to say she had received the one million rouble payment, law enforcement says.
However she was snared by an anti-slavery group called Alternative, who were working with undercover police after they spotted her advertisement to trade the baby.
The woman had previously tried and failed to sell her older daughter when she was aged around one, also for $21,200, it is alleged.
She confessed in full and has been detained for six months in custody pending a criminal investigation.
The woman, a resident of oil-rich Ufa, faces up to six years in jail if convicted.
“The life of the child is not now in danger,” said a source in the Russian Investigative Committee.
Activists from the anti-slavery group had posed as buyers answering her advertisement to sell the child.
Oleg Melnikov, head of the group, claimed that the baby could have been sold to unscrupulous traffickers.
“We prevented the sale of a newborn girl who could fall into the hands of the criminals,” he said.
A law enforcement video showed the woman evidently confessing to selling the baby under interrogation in Moscow.
She denied the money was for the baby but said it was to compensate her for carrying and giving birth to the child.
The girl is in care and likely to be put up for adoption.
The woman’s other two children are also in care. The mother used a false name in seeking to sell the child, it was alleged.
She also demanded a temporary flat in Moscow from the buyers .
The woman has two other children, a son aged four and a daughter, almost two.
Last week Vladimir Tsurkanu, of the Russian Investigative Committee, warned of a rash of baby selling cases with three in as many weeks.
In one, a mother was accused of selling her newborn boy for $125.
In another the price was $6,450 for a boy.
“Similar stories are taking place all around Russia,” Tsurkanu said.
“Police seek to block such attempts.
“But women are trying to give birth using someone else’s documents to fool the legal system for adoption.”
Fears have been expressed that children can also be traded by sex criminals or for body parts.
Australscope
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