Kidnapping common as couples seek easy, fast way to get a child

At a closed adoption agency on the fringes of India's capital, kidnapped toddlers and newborns were once being sold for about $8,000 each, no questions asked.

After presenting the cash, prospective parents would inspect the bewildered children at the "Fastrack International" agency and take them home the same day, according to police who raided the premises last month.

"If you wanted a child, one would appear on your lap," Joint Commissioner of New Delhi Police Dependra Pathak said after the successful operation.

A ledger seized during the raid detailed how 23 children had been sold in just a few months and another 76 transactions were being negotiated, some of them involving babies kidnapped with the help of doctors and nurses from hospitals in other states .

Illegal adoption is a thriving business in India, where more than 100,000 children are reported missing every year, 15 every hour, according to government figures, and activists insist the figures are much higher.

Although many are given up by desperately poor parents in the hope of a better life, others are snatched from hospitals, railway stations and big cities then channeled to couples.

Experts say prospective parents are turning to the black market because of long delays, overcautious officials and complex rules of legally adopting in a country known for its frustrating levels of red tape.

"Why would you wait two years for a baby when you can just pay someone to get you one straightaway?" said Lorraine Campos, assistant director of Palna, one of Delhi's oldest adoption agencies and orphanages.

Campos has noticed a drop in recent years in the number of abandoned babies being brought to Palna, a nonprofit agency caring for about 70 children and registered with the government. She fears some are being handed to criminals instead.

Thousands of children are thought orphaned and abandoned in India, although there are no official figures. But only 4,000 were legally adopted in the year to March, according to government data, down from 6,000 in 2012.

Maneka Gandhi, the minister for women and child development, plans to overhaul the "complicated" system to boost those numbers, saying parents waiting years for children is "shameful".

Gandhi is working to simplify the application process, including through a national online tracking system, and a campaign to encourage more parents to use it.

"Adopting them (children) legally is such a nuisance, so if we make it easier, then people won't go around pinching babies," she said.

Pramod Kumar Soni and his wife, Pinki, welcome the overhaul. In their two-year wait for a baby, they said they were stonewalled by unresponsive officials.

After 12 years of medical tests and fertility treatment, the couple had turned to an adoption agency near their home before giving up in despair, then finally finding success at Palna.

"They didn't have adequate resources, no documents on the children, no answers about how long the process would take, what the process was or any kind of transparency," Soni said of their experience at the previous agency.