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The baby in the case is brought to the City Social Protection Center for further care |
Previously, through monitoring cyberspace and the information provided by the public, the PC02 Division discovered a baby trafficking ring, so they decided to carry out an investigation.
The criminal has been using the nickname "Kimthao le" on social networks such as Facebook and Zalo to post statuses about baby adoption from mothers with unintended pregnancies or infertile families who want to adopt children. Police officers suspected that this nickname is trading in babies and selling children.
Through surveillance, the criminal has regularly joined clandestinegroups for child adoption and associations of infertile couples who seeking gestational surrogacy for child adoption, or women who wanted to give eggs and kidney donations’ to find pregnant women with unintended pregnancies who do not want to raise the child to entice the child with the suggestion of fostering money.
On the other hand, this criminal has also joined groups to find infertile couples who want to adopt a child to sell the child in the form of an adoption agency to benefit.
The criminal rented a room in a secluded area to nurture pregnant women waiting for their due date to hand over their children or as a place to take care of their children before selling to infertile families to facilitate illegal acts and avoid detection by the police force.
In addition, the criminal also used the trick of reporting the loss of identity papers of pregnant women upon admission and falsely declaring information so that the hospital would issue birth certificates with incorrect information in order to legalize birth certificates for infertile families when buying children.
Police officers have identified the group led by Le Hong Anh in HCMC’s District 4, who engaged in trafficking in children under 16 years old. Therefore, on July 25, police officers of the PC02 Division coordinated with their peers of the District 1 police station to arrest Le Hong Anh while she was buying and selling a newborn baby with two women in front of house number 154 Tran Hung Dao Street in Nguyen Cu Trinh Ward of District 1. At the police station, the two women confessed their illicit acts.
On June 28, one of the two women gave birth to a baby boy weighing 2.9 kg at a hospital in the Mekong Delta Province of Ben Tre but the family did not agree to let her raise the baby because of the family’s poor economic status.
So the young girl had no choice but sent her baby boy at the non-public Social Protection Facility Duc Quang Shelter in Long Hoa Commune of Ben Tre Province on July 1. After that, he posted a status to sell her biological child on the Facebook group.
Subsequently, on July 24, Le Hong Anh texted the young girl to buy the baby, the young girl required a gratuity of VND 16.5 million (US$694). Around 3 pm on July 25, when the young girl and her biological mother handed over the baby to Anh to receive the above amount in front of house number 154 Tran Hung Dao, Nguyen Cu Trinh ward, district 1, police officers discovered them.
With the collected documents, the Ho Chi Minh City Police issued an arrest warrant for Le Hong Anh who was detained in an emergency.
Currently, police officers of the PC02 Division in coordination with the District 1 People's Committee have transferred the child in the case to the City Social Protection Center for further care.
