Following the intervention of the National Human Rights Commission, an FIR has been registered in the case, naming among others the Gorakhpur DIG, who was then the SSP of Bareilly.

Narayani, who is the mother of seven children (Rajkumar is the youngest), claims the police forcibly took her son away and handed her over to a “firangi woman”. As per the FIR, the woman is a Mauritian national called Geeta, who is believed to be part of an adoption racket. Apart from her and DIG Anand Swaroop, the others accused in the case are a nurse then working in a Delhi hospital, Pinky; Delhi-based advocates B L Madhukar, Naresh, Lokesh and Roshi; and a constable, Viresh.

As you enter Ruria village in Bareilly’s Fareedpur area and ask for Narayani, everyone points you to the house of “the woman whose child was sold off”.

According to Narayani, her ordeal began when she was admitted to “Ambedkar Hospital” in Delhi’s Rohini Sector 7 area for treatment of tuberculosis. “I spent Rs 3,000 on the first three days of her treatment. Then I left my wife and our nine-month-old son in hospital and returned to the village to arrange for more money,” says Mewalal, Narayani’s husband who works as a rickshaw puller.

According to Narayani, a nurse at the hospital, realising her predicament, offered her monetary help and a job and took her to her house. “After taking care of me for over 10 days, she introduced me and my husband to advocate Madhukar, who took us to a hotel in the Karol Bagh area,” she says.

The next day, Narayani claims, they took her to a court in Tees Hazari and took her thumb impression on some papers. Later, she was told she had given her son up for adoption to Geeta.

“When I protested, I was threatened and asked to pay Rs 10,000 immediately as expenses. In the evening, they again forcibly took my thumb impression, took away our child and physically assaulted us,” Narayani claims.

For the next two months, there was no news of the child. Then, Narayani says, Pinki called up and said the child was hospitalised and the family could take him back.

“When we reached Delhi, we were told Rajkumar was well and that there was some problem with the adoption papers and they needed my thumb impression on another set of papers in the presence of a judge,” says the mother.

With the court being closed for the next three days, Narayani says she managed to give them the slip and return to her village.

However, Geeta, Madhukar and three others allegedly landed up at Ruria and forcibly took Rajkumar away. Narayani says Swaroop, who was then the Bareilly SSP, helped them and even confined her at his house for a day.

She spent the next three years making the rounds of police stations, approaching politicians and writing letters to the NHRC, getting it finally to intervene. It was on NHRC’s orders that the FIR was lodged at Fareedpur police station on July 2. Swaroop and constable Viresh were charged with accepting bribe from Geeta to help her take Rajkumar.