Karimnagar, January 31: A poverty-stricken woman put her one-year-old baby on sale at Tippapur in Vemulawada mandal. She even approached a broker for this purpose.
Kousalya married Sundaraiah in Pathipadu in Guntur district and they migrated to Sircilla in search of a livelihood about 7 years ago.
Sundaraiah died due to heart ailment, two months ago. Since then Kousalya has been working as a help in a tent house to take care of her three daughters, Usha (12), Ashwini (9) and Alekhya (1).
But the wages she has been getting were insufficient to run the family so much so that she could not even feed her children.
Kousalya is also not a beneficiary of any of the welfare schemes that the state government is implementing and she also has no other source of income or support. To come out of the financial crisis, albeit for sometime, she finally, decided to sell her young baby Alekhya and fixed the price at Rs 6,100. This amount, she felt, would be sufficient to run the family without any financial problems for few days and approached a broker.
Meanwhile, another person approached her to buy the baby girl but the information got leaked to media yesterday.
A private news channel tried to record the deal through a hidden camera.
Sensing that they were being videographed, broker Sunitha escaped from the scene and Kousalya tried to wriggle out of the situation by saying she never thought of selling her child. She also disappeared on Sunday.
Earlier, she told locals about her problems and was even upset that none bothered about her plight. Her neighbours said that she neither had a ration card nor a house.
The government should help her in Rachabanda, they felt.
Since there was no complaint lodged officially, police did not register any case.
–Agencies