A gang of children traffic dealers detected in Chechnya

The police detected a criminal group who within half a year sold up to 12 children from Chechnya and Dagestan to residents of Russia and Turkey, sources in law enforcement bodies reported.

On October, 31, the police detained a sixty-one-year-old woman resident of Dagestan in the capital of Chechnya at the moment of an attempt to sell a newborn boy from Makhachkala for 550 thousand rubles, a source in the Ministry of Interior Affairs of Chechnya told the “Caucasian Knot” correspondent. A woman police officer played the role of the “customer”.

“During interrogation the woman dealer confessed to acting as part of a group with the participation of employees of maternity hospitals of Makhachkala, Derbent and Khasavyurt”, the source informed.

Later one more woman from the criminal group, a sixty-year-old doctor of one of the local hospitals, was detained in Khasavyurt.

“It was established that on October, 30, the detained women sold a girl aged one year and eight months for 400 thousand rubles in Khasavyurt. They are also suspected of committing up to 12 similar crimes”, our interlocutor said.

“A woman detained in Grozny was searching for customers and her accomplice was finding children. The scheme of actions of the criminal group was smoothly running. Parents of newborn children were told that their baby had a grave native disease after which some of them declined their babies. The customers offered 400 thousand rubles for a girl and 550 for a boy while the women who played the role of intermediaries received only 50 thousand rubles each. The rest of the money was given to the personnel of maternity hospitals”, the source explained.

“Detection of all the participants of the criminal group who according to operative data, sold 12 babies within the period from July till November, 2012, is currently in process. The group consists not only of midwifes and medical staff of several maternity hospitals but also of businessmen who earned large sums of money on sales of “living goods”, the police officer said.

A well informed source in law enforcement bodies of Chechnya reported that the woman detained in Grozny denied her guilt. “She states that she tried to sell the baby upon its mother’s request but the mother has not yet been found and interrogated”, our interlocutor said.