A woman in Russia's Chelyabinsk Region was sentenced on Thursday to four and a half years in prison for attempting to sell her newborn baby boy for 10,000 rubles (about $330), a local court said in a statement.
The woman in the Urals town of Satka was an alcoholic who did not have a permanent place of residence or a steady job, the statement said. She was arrested in early March after selling her baby for 10,000 rubles to undercover police officers.
"The woman was convicted for committing a crime against the personal freedom of her son...and sentenced to four years and six months in a penal colony," the court statement said.
Earlier on Thursday, a similar case was opened against a 22-year-old mother in Grozny who attempted to sell her two 9-month-old babies for 200,000 rubles ($7,000), a local police source said.
She was selling her children near Grozny's central maternity hospital, but the buyers turned out to be undercover police officers. The woman received the money in marked notes and was arrested immediately after handing the babies over to the "new parents," the press service of Chechnya's Interior Ministry said.
The woman told investigators she was a single mother and decided to sell the babies because she had no money to feed her first two children, let alone the young twins.
If convicted, she could be jailed for up to 15 years.
CHELYABINSK, June 2 (RIA Novosti)
