Couple who sold off their children to fund drug habit booked; one rescued

A one-month-old girl was allegedly sold by her parents to fund their drug habit. The police have booked the couple and the buyer of the child.

A one-month-and-22-day-old girl, who was allegedly sold off by her parents as the couple needed money to buy drugs, was rescued on Thursday, the crime branch said and added a search is on for her older brother.

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The police have booked the couple, identified as Shabbir Shamsher Khan and Saniya Shabbir Khan, the buyer of the child, and an agent under section 370 (4) (trafficking a minor) and 370 (5) (trafficking more than one minor) of the Indian Penal Code and sections of the Juvenile Justice Act. No arrests have been made yet.

The complainant in the case is Rubina Khan, sister of Shabbir. She said when the couple visited her home in Bharat Nagar, Bandra East, on October 5, they were with only their four-year-old son.

“They had their elder son with them and not the two younger children, which greatly concerned me. Suspicious, I asked them about the whereabouts of the younger ones, but they kept giving me vague replies for a few days,” she told the DN Nagar police.

Along with her 18-year-old son, Rubina then planned an outing with Saniya where she again asked her the same question. “It was then that she told me they had sold off the children to fund their drug habit. While they sold my younger nephew when he was aged six months to someone in Andheri for ₹60,000, they sold the girl on the very day she was born to a DN Nagar resident for a mere ₹14,000.”

Rubina said Shabbir and Saniya earlier lived with her family in Bharat Nagar. “However, I used to have constant fights with them since I did not like their habit of being dependent on psychotropic substances. Therefore, they first moved to Versova to live with Saniya’s mother and then to Nalasopara after her death.”

In her complaint filed on Thursday, she said the couple kept struggling for money to buy substance and they had visited her house expecting monetary help. During investigation, the police found Shakeel Makrani who had bought the girl, and the agent, Usha Rathod.

“Since the girl had been sold off recently, we could track her and the buyer on the very same day. We are on the lookout for her brother. We are already on the pursuit of the people who bought him,” said an officer from unit 9 of the crime branch which is investigating the matter.