Surrogacy, egg-donation racket busted, 2 women arrested

The woman, who had arrived at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport, was arrested along with a fellow woman traveller – an egg donor she was escorting back from the South-East Asian city

MUMBAI: A shifty traveller’s evasive answers about a Bangkok visit tipped off immigration officials to a surrogacy and egg-donation racket operating out of Thane. The woman, who had arrived at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport, was arrested along with a fellow woman traveller – an egg donor she was escorting back from the South-East Asian city.

Surrogacy, egg-donation racket busted, 2 women arrested.

Police said Sunoti Belele, 44, a resident of Kalyan, was running a well-organised racket that provided unmarried Indian women as surrogate mothers and egg donors to clients in India and overseas. She was running the racket along with Sangita Bagul, 35, a resident of Thane, who is on the run.

Belele told police she helmed the operation from a clinic called Elite Care in Thane. Investigations have already identified several IVF labs involved in the racket.

Police said that Vaibhav Bhosale, a counter officer at the airport’s immigration bay, had asked Belele on Friday afternoon to describe the purpose of her visit to Bangkok, from where she was returning. When she couldn’t provide a satisfactory answer, Bhosale directed her to other officers for further questioning. Eventually, Belele confessed she was running an IVF business.

She said she had been illegally supplying unmarried women as egg donors to various IVF centres and had also forged documents to show unmarried women as married, to evade breaking the law.

“In India, according to the Surrogacy (Regulation) Act, 2021, only married women with at least one child can act as egg donors,” said a police officer.

Police said Belele had taken the other woman to Bangkok for medical tests as she was to be an egg donor. The woman told the police that she knew Bagul since 2022 and had been donating her eggs since then, first at an Andheri-based hospital in Mumbai, then to a clinic in Kenya, and a clinic in Kazakhstan. In 2025, she was flown to Thailand to sell her eggs there but was found medically unfit to do so.

The three women have been charged under sections 336 for forgery and 61 for criminal conspiracy of the Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, and various sections of the Surrogacy (Regulation) Act, 2021.