Madhavi at the police station with her mother.
Two days after NDTV's expose about a child selling racket in Telangana's Nalgonda district, the police arrested the broker, Kamli, and are trying to track the babies she has sold. They have already traced 15-month-old Madhavi, the sister of the child she was trying to sell to the NDTV team.
When an undercover NDTV team had gone to a government-run children's home in Nalgonda, posing as a childless couple, Kamli had offered them a three-month-old baby, Bhavani, for Rs 30,000. Asked if anything might go wrong, she had boasted, "You don't know about Kamli. I have given at least 20 babies so far".
Police said Kamli, a local vice-sarpanch, has admitted to selling Madhavi for Rs 17,000, but denied selling any other baby. "We need parents to come forward and report," said Chandramohan, deputy superintendent of police, Devarakonda, Nalgonda.
Madhavi's father Swamy, who had allegedly accepted Rs 5,000 as "hospital expenses" after giving away the child, has been arrested. Her foster parents, who had "bought" her after having several stillborn babies, are behind the bars as well.
Kamli had allegedly taken away Madhavi from her mother Rajitha, soon after her birth. Rajitha, 22, had not parted with her willingly. But she had given birth to three baby girls in less than four years and the family was extremely poor.
"Once I asked Kamli about Madhavi," Rajitha had told NDTV. "She said, 'Are you even capable of looking after her?' I felt humiliated and I couldn't ask again,'' Rajitha said.
Today, as she was being reunited with her mother, Madhavi looked terrified. "She didn't recognise me. That is my fate. But I am very happy to see her,'' Rajitha said.
For now, the child will have to be kept in Shishu Vihar, another government-run home for children, since her foster parents are in jail.
But Rajitha said she was ready to bring up all three girls by herself. "Now that I have seen her again, I can't let go. I'm ready to beg, but I will look after her,'' she said.