CHENNAI: An attempt to sell off a newborn girl has landed four women in the police dragnet on Wednesday. The four women, including the mother of the three-day-old baby girl, were caught by the public and handed over to the police when they were allegedly finalising the ‘deal’.The Chintadripet women police produced the women before a court which remanded them to custody. Poilce said Selvi, the newborn’s mother, landed at Park station, where she stays on a platform with her husband, a worker at a catering firm, and a five-year-old daughter, on Wednesday morning after she slipped away from the Kasturba Gandhi Hospital in Triplicane barely three days after giving birth. There, she met Sarala, her friend, and Amala, an acquaintance of Sarala, who reportedly counselled her to give up her newborn in exchange for money as she would not be able to bring her up. The entire conversation was overheard by an autorickshaw driver who accosted the women, the police told Express.After they were confronted, the women reportedly threatened the autorickshaw driver, who raised an alarm. Soon, people rounded up the women and informed the police.At the police station, a little less than Rs 40,000 was recovered from them. Police said one of the women, Saroja, who worked as a domestic help in Chintadripet, wanted a child and approached Amala, who ran a petty shop in the same area. Amala then passed the word on to Sarala, a flower vendor who happened to be known to Selvi.Selvi already had a 10-year-old daughter, Sapna, who stayed in a hostel, and a five-year-old girl, Jyothika, who stayed with them on the platform. A domestic help, Selvi was finding it difficult to make ends meet and could not resist the lure of money. She ran away from the hospital with her newborn child after Sarala offered her the ‘deal’, the police said.The baby girl has been handed over to Childline, the police added.
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