Police in India have recovered the remains of five newborns and rescued ten more babies in the eastern region after authorities uncovered an illegal adoption racket this month, sparking a massive investigation.
Eighteen people have been arrested since last week after police rescued three stolen infants, who were being smuggled in cardboard boxes from a clinic north of Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal.
Police, who have been carrying out raids in and around the city, suspect the gang trafficked 45 newborns in two years and clinics were paid 200,000 rupees (€2,700) for a boy and half that for a girl.
State child welfare minister Sashi Panja said authorities were now investigating hundreds of private clinics.
A police spokesman told AFP that officers exhumed two newborn skeletons and three skulls from the premises of an adoption centre run by a charity on Sunday.
On the same day, ten baby girls were found at a home for senior citizens in the southern part of the capital.
The spokesman said the traffickers were unable to sell the babies - aged between one and 10 months - because of the low demand for girls in India.
The babies are now in hospital undergoing treatment for malnourishment.
Police suspect an overseas link with the racket after around $3,200 in US dollars and euros were recovered from the gang and it was suspected that a baby was sold into the US.
Parents of one of the stolen baby girls recovered last week, who were reunited with her, said the clinic told them she was stillborn.
Police rescued the girl as she was being taken from the clinic in a biscuit packaging box. The plan was to hand her over to a charity, which would have passed her to an agent working for prospective adoptive parents.
Experts say couples wanting to legally adopt in India are often frustrated by lengthy bureaucratic delays and complex rules, pushing them towards the thriving illegal adoption market.
Desperately poor parents also sometimes sell their children, while others are kidnapped by traffickers, experts say.
India has an estimated 30 million orphans. But only 4,362 children were legally adopted in 2014 and 3,677 in 2015, according to the government's central adoption authority.
