Police rescue 37 infants in child trafficking bust

Police rescued 37 babies and a three-year-old girl in an operation that led to the arrest of 103 suspected child traffickers. The newborn babies were abused and traffickers fed them instant noodles or leftovers, detectives said in a CCTV report.
The smugglers recruited pregnant women who would give birth in an abandoned factory in Jining, Shandong then hand over the newborns to traffickers, SCMP reports, citing the CCTV News report from Monday.

The infants were transported to a morgue at a hospital for infectious diseases in the Jining suburbs, where they would stay until they were sold. Hou Jun, a Jinan detective, told CCTV that “the infants were abused” and that they were only fed instant noodles or leftover vegetables. When Jinan police raided the morgue, they found the babies in poor health due to neglect.
The boys were sold for prices between 50,000 yuan and 80,000 yuan, the report said. Mothers who sold their babies were among the 103 people detained in the raid, although it’s unclear when the raid took place.

In November, police rescued 11 babies from a human trafficking group comprised of family members in Yunnan. The ringleader reportedly spent 8,000 to 10,000 yuan purchasing an infant in rural areas of the province and the group would later sell the child for around 140,000 yuan in provinces such as Fujian and Shandong.