Child sale issue rocks Odisha Assembly

Odisha Channel Bureau Bhubaneswar, July 17: The child sale issue rocked the Odisha Assembly here on Thursday with both Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party demanding a statement from Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on the alleged sale of children by a poor couple in the State Capital.The members of both Congress and BJP entered the well of the House and raised slogans against the Naveen Patnaik Government and disrupted the proceedings terming the child sale by a couple who lived in a city slum.Leader of Opposition Narasingha Mishra, who dubbed in the incident as a shame for the State and its people, demanded that the Chief Minister must inform the House about the circumstances that led to the couple selling their children.Though it was alleged that the couple had sold three of their sons, police had been able to collect evidence about the selling of their youngest child, a less-than-a-month-old boy, on July 9 for a sum of Rs.6,000.Two of the total seven children of couple were dead and three had been allegedly sold to different persons to earn money to manage their family.The police had been able to rescue the infant and detained five persons, including the couple who had sold the baby (Shyama Chandra Rao and his wife Pramila), the couple that had purchased the baby, and another person involved in the sale.As the city police continued its investigation, Collector of Khurda district Niranjan Sahu visited the slum near the Press Colony where the Rao couple lived to find out details about the child sale.