You can shop for chocolates, flowers, furniture and more on Facebook, but a man in India has gone a step further and sold a newborn baby for $830.
Feroz Khan of Ludhiana in northwest India allegedly kidnapped his daughter Noori's son from the hospital shortly after he was born on April 3. He then told his daughter Noori that her son had died.
Khan initially sold his grandson for $830 to a nurse in the hospital where his daughter gave birth to her son. A lab assistant in the hospital bought the baby from the nurse for about $5,500, and then re-sold him for roughly $15,000 to a businessman.
According to a report, Khan, with the help of two temporary employees at the hospital, arranged a deal on Facebook to sell his baby grandson for Rs 45,000 ($830). The newborn baby was sold to Amit Kumar of New Delhi. Noori filed a police report that her son had been kidnapped.
"We acted upon the complaint of the mother, who alleged that her child was stolen from the nursing home in Ludhiana," Ishwar Singh, Ludhiana's Commissioner of Police, said. "After investigations, we found the grandfather of the child had struck a deal with a man in Delhi and had roped-in the nursing staff to smuggle the baby out of the nursing home. We have arrested four people including the grandfather. We have also booked the buyer from Delhi."
Police found the baby at Facebook buyer Kumar's Ranjit Nagar home on Tuesday.
"All three people who conspired to sell the child have been arrested and we will be interrogating the businessman who paid the money to buy the baby," says Satish Malhotra, a senior police officer in Ludhiana. The three face seven years in jail if convicted for kidnapping.
Noori divorced her husband and Khan wanted her to get an abortion when she became pregnant. Khan's plan to sell the baby on Facebook was apparently to facilitate his daughter's second marriage.
