Click to play videoKonkan (Maharashtra): Misty hills, swollen rivers and incessant rain are common in Maharashtra's Konkan belt.
This sparsely populated region along the west coast doesn't have a single adoption home, making it the perfect hunting ground for baby snatchers.
"We need a children's home here so that couples from our district can adopt children without having to go to other districts," says Chairperson, Child Welfare Committee (CWC), Ratnagiri, Dr Shashwat Shere.
The extent of the problem is clear. One has to travel through the districts of Raigadh, Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg to reach the only children's home in the region, near the town of Kudal.
The Kudal children's home is a two-room cottage that houses 35 children and it's this vacuum that Preet Mandir was attempting to fill.
Social workers here in Sindhudurg say that Preet Mandir was attempting to source children from the Konkan belt, for its centre in Goa.
"A social worker in Lanja told me that Preet Mandir had called her up and asked her to commit children from Devrukh for their centre in Goa, " says Chairman CWC, Sindhudurg, Dr M G Savadatti.
The deal had even been worked out until a family went to adopt a child from Preet Mandir in Pune.
The parents (names withheld) were turned away by Preet Mandir. "Unhone pehle 60 hazar manga. Phir ek example diya ki yeh couple hain inhone 1 lakh diya aur ab yeh bachche ko foreign le ja rahe hain (First he asked me for Rs 60,000. Then he gave an example of a couple who had paid Rs 1 lakh and were taking the baby abroad), " says the parent.
It's this incident that had alerted social workers here about Preet Mandir's game plan of running a business by treating children as commodities.
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