Published Mar 10, 2026 | 9:28 PM ⚊ Updated Mar 10, 2026 | 9:28 PM
Dr Athaluri Namratha ran Universal Srushti Fertility Centre without a registration since 2016.
Synopsis: The ED on 10 March said it has attached properties worth about ₹50 crore belonging to Dr Pachipalli Namratha and her family after tracing the proceeds of a baby trafficking racket run through a fertility clinic in Telangana’s Secunderabad. The agency said the clinic bought newborns from poor families through agents for between ₹3.5 lakh and ₹4.5 lakh and sold them at up to ten times that amount to childless couples, along with forged birth records, while claiming the babies were born through IVF and surrogacy.
For over a decade, hopeful couples who walked into Universal Srushti Fertility Centre in Telangana’s Secunderabad for a child of their own always found success.
The clinic assured them the infants were conceived with IVF and carried via surrogacy. But few, if any, of the couples realised that these newborns were neither IVF babies nor born to surrogates. Instead, they were children of impoverished families, bought for modest sums and passed off at a steep markup, with forged documents covering the trail.
If Dr Pachipalli Namratha, who ran the centre, paid roughly ₹3.5 lakh for a girl child and ₹4.5 lakh for a boy, she would charge childless couples anywhere between ₹11 lakh and ₹44 lakh.
Months after the years-long scam was first busted, the Directorate of Enforcement (ED) on Tuesday, 10 March, said it had provisionally attached 50 immovable properties, including land parcels, residential flats and a hospital, registered in the names of Dr Namratha and her sons, with a current market value estimated at around ₹50 crore.
The agency said in a statement that it had traced payments for many of these properties to cash transactions funded directly by the proceeds of crime.
The fraud followed a tried and tested process. Dr Namratha’s network recruited pregnant women from poor and vulnerable backgrounds through a chain of agents and sub-agents, luring them with cash payments to surrender their newborns at birth.
Deliveries took place at her Visakhapatnam clinic after authorities revoked the licence of her Secunderabad hospital.
To maintain the fiction of genuine surrogacy for paying couples, the clinic collected gametes, but there was no surrogacy or IVF.
“A network of agents and sub-agents were found to be involved in the racket for arranging poor and needy pregnant women and luring them with money to give up their child as soon as the child was born,” the ED said.
Birth certificates sent to municipal authorities were forged, with the names of the childless couples listed as parents in place of the biological ones.
Couples paid by cheque and cash. A portion was distributed as commissions to agents and sub-agents. From there, funds flowed to the biological parents of the trafficked babies.
The ED said analysis of bank accounts maintained by Dr Namratha confirmed this chain.
The racket had been running since 2014, the ED said. Dr Namratha continued operations even after authorities suspended her medical licence and registered multiple criminal cases against her.
The case came into public view in July 2025, when the first FIR was lodged at Gopalapuram Police Station in Hyderabad. Within weeks, eight more FIRs were registered.
A Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Central Crime Station was formed in August 2025. More than 25 arrests followed, including five doctors.
The ED launched raids across nine locations in September 2025. Dr Namratha was arrested on 12 February 2026 under Section 19 of the PMLA. “Presently she is in judicial custody. Further investigation is under progress,” the agency said.
More than 80 couples have been identified as victims. Some were handed children unrelated to their own DNA; others received forged death reports. The full financial network, including hawala links and inter-state connections across Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, remains under investigation.
(Edited by Dese Gowda)
