HIGH PRICES AND DEMAND RESULT IN SALES OF BABIES

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 15 (Bernama) -- The lucrative price and good demand are

among the factors baby sales in the black market are still going on.

Federal CID Secret Societies, Gambling and Vice (D7) principal assistant

director Datuk Abdul Jalil Hassan said a baby could fetch a price of RM20,000

depending on the `level of perfection'' and fairness of skin.

"The price of a baby is higher if accompanied with identification documents

such as birth certificate during the purchase.

"The process of furnishing the identification of a baby is a difficult

one and requires cooperation between the buyer and seller.

"We believe baby sale syndicates are getting more rampant due to the very

high demand especially from childless couples," he told Bernama, here, today.

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POLICE- BABY 2 KUALA LUMPUR

Normally, he said most babies were sold at the age of one to three months

but there were cases of children up to six years old being sold.

He said expectant mothers, those who conceived out of wedlock or foreigners

who wanted money in exchange for the baby, were placed at illegal centres, and

well taken care of, to produce healthy babies who could fetch lucrative prices.

The latest figures indicated a drop to nine cases of baby sales last year

compared to 20 in 2010. In January last year, police thwarted an attempt to sell

babies who were between five and seven days old for between RM15,000 and

RM20,000.

Police also rescued three babies, two women who were in an advanced stage of

pregnancy, aged 20 to 30, and a mother of one of the babies in three raids in

Selangor during the period.

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POLICE-BABY 3 (LAST) KUALA LUMPUR

Kuala Lumpur Social Development, Crime Prevention and Anti-Drugs Voluntary

Organisation (Pencegah) president Jeevan S. Ramamurthy did not rule out baby

sales in the interior areas.

"The high birth rate of babies make police monitoring difficult. The

syndicates are getting more rampant because families are hard-pressed for cash

and lack of hospital records make the racket difficult to detect," he said.

He said private clinics issuing false information on births also helped the

activities as it simplified the processing of birth documents.

He said to curb baby sales all parties including headmen, village midwives

and rural clinics must play an important role to furnish information on births.

A safer way for women who did not want their babies is to register them with

the Social Welfare Department for adoption, he added.

--BERNAMA

SAH MRA AKT AZ AO