A woman from an impoverished family in West Bengal's Jalpaiguri has sold her newborn son for Rs 13,000 to a childless couple.
A woman from an impoverished family in West Bengal's Jalpaiguri has sold her newborn son for Rs 13,000 to a childless couple because she was too poor to take care of him.
The woman, Gauri Das, already has three daughters from her second marriage; her husband left the family a few months ago.
The only source of income for the family is the alms earned by Gauri's mother, who begs on the streets of Jalpaiguri.
Gauri claims that though she has worked for a few days under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act scheme (MNREGA) but she was never paid for it.
The infant was born on 24 May and sold on 27 May. After hearing about the case, the administration swung into action and found the baby on 31 May, but Gauri refused to take him back.
"I wouldn't have been able to take care of him. How am I going to feed him," she told NDTV.
She added that she was willing to take her son back if the government offered her some kind of help. Gauri does not have a BPL card and her house is falling apart. So far, she said, the only help the local administration has given her is a sack of rice and dal.
A neighbour told NDTV that the family was so poor that on rainy days, when Gauri's mother could not go out to beg, the family went without any food.
The infant is currently with the child welfare committee. The mother has been given 60 days to decide whether she wants to take back her son. The baby for now has been given a name, Rohit.