An Indian Woman Sold Her Baby to Make Ends Meet During Lockdown. She Isn’t the First

In an incident, the likes of which have been disturbingly common during India’s COVID-19 lockdowns, a 22-year-old mother from the south Indian city of Hyderabad sold her two-month old baby for INR 45,000 (USD $600) to make ends meet.

Shaikh Zoya Khan reportedly sold her baby so she could gather money and move to India’s financial capital of Mumbai. Her husband had walked out on her on August 3 after a petty fight, leaving her alone to fend for herself and her newborn. But when he returned home on August 8, he was told about the incident, after which he filed a complaint with Hyderabad’s Habeeb Nagar police station on August 11, alleging that his wife had sold their baby through mediators.

Police have arrested six people in connection with the case under the Juvenile Justice Act. These include Khan, the couple she sold the baby to, their family members, and the two mediators who tried to broker the exchange.

However, this isn’t an isolated incident amidst India’s stringent lockdown, that has significantly contributed to an economic collapse and rampant unemployment.

In May, another couple in Hyderabad had tried to sell their two-month old son for INR 22,000 (USD $293). The couple were both migrant construction labourers who had lost their livelihood due to the COVID-19 lockdown.

In a case from the west Indian city of Kolkata in June, a domestic worker and her husband who worked as a daily wage labourer, were compelled to sell their two-and-a-half-month old daughter for as little as INR 3,000 (USD $40).

In yet another case in the Northeastern state of Assam, a migrant worker left impoverished by the lack of work in the lockdown, sold his 15-day old daughter for INR 45,000 (USD $600) in July.

Trafficking of children is a serious problem in India, where it is estimated a child goes missing every eight minutes. Most children sold off at an early age are forced into labour or sexually exploited.

The frequency of recent cases mirrors the argument made by Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi-run Bachpan Bachao Andolan, a non-governmental organisation working for child rights. In a plea filed in the Supreme Court, the NGO said that lockdown restrictions would lead to a spike in cases of child trafficking.

The NGO filed a petition after several cases of child trafficking were reported in states across the country. “It’s a poignant reality that poverty and hunger awaits them (daily wage workers and migrant labourers), as they would have migrated (to cities) in the first place due to lack of work in their native villages,” the plea stated. “Many will be forced into a vicious debt cycle at predatory interest rates because of their dire financial situation, which will prove to be a fertile ground for child traffickers.”

In response to their petition, the Supreme Court issued a notice to the central government, the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) and the nine Indian states where such crimes were most prevalent on June 8, urging them to frame appropriate policies to prevent child trafficking during India’s lockdown.

A July 2020 report by Save the Children, an NGO working for child rights and protection, found that not only were a quarter of human trafficking victims minors, but also the COVID-19 pandemic isolated these children and made it harder to rescue them.

A report by child rights NGO Save the Children shared with VICE News details that eight out of ten vulnerable households with children surveyed reported a loss of jobs or income.

The United Nations Drug and Crime Research Brief released in May predicted that the economic downturn caused by global lockdowns and social distancing could potentially lead to a rise in human trafficking.

According to data from the National Crime Records Bureau, from a total of 5,264 cases of human trafficking reported in 2018, 48 percent were under the age of 18.

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