A 30-YEAR-OLD Bolivian woman was arrested for selling her newborn baby for the equivalent of $US140 ($166), police said today.
Police official Jose Borda, who heads the division of trafficking of persons in the city of Cochabamba, identified the woman as Jesusa Molle and said she acknowledged during questioning selling the baby girl.
The woman “at first pretended that the baby girl was kidnapped from the maternity ward” but later admitted having sold the newborn for 1000 bolivianos, the equivalent of $US140.
The mother, a domestic worker from an indigenous family, said she had agreed to the sale because she could not afford to care for the child after being abandoned by her husband.
Authorities also arrested the buyer, 35-year-old Evangelina Suarez, who could not have children of her own and had agreed on the deal two months earlier.
Bolivia is among the poorest countries in Latin America with 60 per cent living below the poverty line.
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