Woman held for trying to sell friend’s child

The victim, Swetha of Sathuvachari in Vellore, put up with her friend Anbarasi in Mathur near Madhavaram

10 days ago after a dispute with her husband Dheenadhayalan, an alcoholic. Swetha had left with her three-year-old daughter and three-month-old son.

While she took up a job at a nearby marriage hall in Mathur, Anbarasi (28), a physically-challenged woman, asked Swetha to sell off her son for a hefty sum, claiming that raising two children would be a burden. Even as Swetha refused to give in to Anbarasi’s lure, the latter took the child, when his mother was away on Saturday, to sell him.

Police said that Swetha who returned home from work at 11 am, could not find her son or Anbarasi. As she frantically searched in the locality, neighbours informed her that Vadivukarasi (52), the owner of Anbarasi’s house, her sister Babitha (48) and Anbarasi had taken baby out. Fearing the worst, Swetha filed a complaint with the Madhavaram Milk Colony police station immediately. The cops launched a hunt for the infant and the others. They received a tip-off that a baby had been found abandoned at the Perumal Temple in Edama Nagar.

“The child was Swetha’s son. The women had come to know about the police complaint and abandoned the kid,” a cop who arrested Anbarasi from a nearby the temple and remanded her in judicial custody, said.

Police called Dheenadhayalan to the police station and sent Swetha and the children with him. A case has been registered and the police are searching for Vadivukarasi and her sister Babitha. Preliminary inquiry revealed that Vadivukarasi was the wife of history-sheeter Maalaikan Selvan, who died a few years ago. 

“Anbukarasi said she did not know anything about the people who wanted to purchase the kid and their identities would be known only after the arrest of the sisters,” police said. On May 8, two north Indian couples were arrested for selling a child to a Chennai woman. In September last year, a child which was kidnapped from Egmore children’s hospital to be sold to a woman in Salem, was traced after three days and reunited with her mother.