India nanny drugs, rents out baby to beggars

Published Friday, November 06, 2009

By Reuters

A nanny in India's IT hub of Bangalore was fired after she regularly drugged a seven-month-old baby in her care and rented him out for $2 a day to be used by street beggars, a newspaper reported on Friday. The child's mother found her baby missing when one day she returned home early from work at a multi-national firm, the Times of India newspaper said.

The nanny confessed to have been renting out the baby for the past three weeks, it said.

Beggars with babies are a common sight at traffic signals and roads in cities and towns of India, where giving alms is traditionally considered a way of gaining spiritual merit.

Rising female employment and a preference for nuclear families in India means more children are being handed over to hired help for care when parents go off to work.

Keep up with the latest business news from the region with the Emirates Business 24|7 daily newsletter. To subscribe to the newsletter, please click here.

Follow Emirates 24|7 on Google News.

The page was last updated on: 14 January 2016 21:13