Poor couple sells child in Odisha Capital

Odisha Channel Bureau Bhubaneswar, July 17: Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has been claiming to have been working hard for the welfare of the poor people for more than 14 years, a poor couple has been found to have sold their baby boy to earn some money in the Capital city.Bhubaneswar police on Wednesday detained the couple for allegedly selling one of their children after a child right activist lodged a complaint with the Kharavela Nagar Police station.Though it was alleged that the couple had sold three of their children, they have reportedly told the police that they sold their less than a month old boy for a paltry sum of Rs.6,000 to another couple on July 9.Shyama Chandra Rao and his wife Pramila had been living in a slum in the Press Colony for the past several years.They were daily wage earners.The couple that purchased the boy also lived in the same locality, and they have told police that they had handed over the baby boy to one of their daughters who had no sons of her own.Child sale by poor parents is not new in Odisha, but the incident taking place in the Capital city of the State has put a question mark over the efficiency of the authorities who claim to have implemented scores of welfare measures to help the poor in a big way in the recent years.