The Telangana police registered a case on Thursday, against parents of a baby for allegedly selling the boy to another couple.
PTI reported that around seven months ago, B Lalamma and B Jaiappa, residents of Karankota in the state’s Vikarabad district, sold their one-and-a-half month old boy to another couple, Vijaya and Bhoopathi, based in Tandur town, around seven months ago.
The police said that they were tipped off by the NGO Childline, and found that two people, identified as Anjarmma and Dattappa, acted as agents, and sold the boy for Rs 8,000, to the couple in Tandur.
The PTI report also quotes the police as saying that the parents of the boy had even prepared a legal adoption deed with the help of a lawyer, before taking money from the other couple.
The police registered a case under the Juvenile Justice Act and relevant sections of the IPC, while the rescued boy has now been shifted to a state-run shelter.
This is not the first time that such an incident has occurred in the state.
In March this year, a newborn girl child was sold for Rs 50,000, at a private nursing home in Ibrahimpatnam town on the outskirts of Hyderabad, before she was rescued.
What was even more shocking, was that the couple, who wanted to 'get rid' of their third girl child, were allegedly helped by a doctor, who took a commission for arranging the sale.
In April, a 21-year-old woman allegedly sold her two-month-old boy to a couple for Rs 10,000 in Secunderabad, after she went to the railway station to reportedly dump her baby.
In January this year, a 15-day-old girl child was found dead in a sewage canal in Hyderabad, in the Jeedimetla industrial area.
"Incidents of infanticide have become very common in the state and 11 such cases of throwing infants in sewers, bushes and tanks have taken place in and around Hyderabad over the past three months," Balala Hakkula Sangam (BHS), a child rights organization, had said at the time.
BHS had demanded that the ‘Ooyala’, or cradle baby scheme, be reinstated in the state to stop infanticide.