A 31-year-old housewife has been arrested in the city of Palembang, South Sumatra, for allegedly selling her 3-month-old daughter for IDR20 million (US$1,600).
“The reason for the sale was because I have a lot of children, sometimes my husband can make money and sometimes he cannot as he works as a day laborer and I was afraid we could not provide for her later when [she was] big,” said the woman, identified as FM, told Detik today.
The baby FM sold was her fifth child and said she did not think she had made a bad decision since she believed the person who purchased her daughter was a good person desperate to adopt a child.
She said that the IDR20 million price was to cover the cost of the cesarean section birth and also for her family’s livelihood. She said a neighbor helped arrange the sale and was given an additional IDR1 million from the buyer.
Although she claimed to have pressing financial needs, police said there was evidence that the money FM received from the sale of her daughter had been used to buy crystal meth, as well as clothing and shoes.
In the end it was FM’s husband who reported her to the police after his wife had gone missing for a month and returned without their daughter.
Police located the buyer, identified as MS, in Banten along with the baby who was safely returned to her extended family. MS claimed to police that FM had lied to her about her status, saying she had no husband and could not support the baby. Authorities do not believe the transaction was the work of a larger human trafficking network.
For the crime of selling her own child, FM could receive a maximum sentence of 15 years in jail under Indonesia’s child protection laws.
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