Hyderabad Surrogacy Scam: ED Seizes Assets Linked to Alleged Baby Trafficking Network
(By Syed Ali Taher Abedi)
Hyderabad, March 10: The Directorate of Enforcement (ED), Hyderabad Zonal Office, has provisionally attached 50 immovable properties worth ₹29.76 crore under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002, in connection with an alleged illegal surrogacy racket operated by Dr. Pachipalli Namratha alias Athluri Namratha through Universal Srusthi Fertility & Research Centre.
The assets comprising land parcels, flats, and a hospital registered in the names of Dr. Namratha and her sons are estimated to hold a present market value of nearly ₹50 crore.
The ED action follows multiple FIRs lodged by Gopalapuram Police, Hyderabad, citing fraud, cheating, criminal conspiracy, illegal surrogacy, and child trafficking.
In a startling revelation underscoring the darker undercurrents of medical malfeasance, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has unravelled a sophisticated surrogacy racket orchestrated by Dr. Pachipalli Namratha @ Athluri Namratha, proprietor of Universal Srusthi Fertility & Research Centre.
Operating through her clinic, employees, and a web of agents, Dr. Namratha systematically supplied newborn infants to childless couples, cloaking an illicit child trafficking operation under the guise of legitimate assisted reproductive technology.
The PMLA investigation lays bare a meticulously devised scheme wherein Dr. Namratha extracted substantial sums often running into crores from desperate childless couples, premising delivery of a newborn via surrogate motherhood.
To lend an air of authenticity, gametes from these couples were ostensibly collected for implantation.
In reality, however, the infants were procured from indigent and vulnerable biological parents, ensnared in poverty and coercion, who were either unwilling or unable to sustain the pregnancy and contemplated termination.
A clandestine network of agents and sub-agents played a pivotal role, scouting and enticing economically distressed pregnant women with pecuniary inducements to relinquish their newborns immediately post-delivery.
Investigative findings disclose that Dr. Namratha disbursed approximately Rs. 3.5 lakh for female infants and Rs. 4.5 lakh for male infants, commodifying lives in a manner that shocks judicial conscience.
These illicit transactions were executed at her Visakhapatnam facility, a deliberate pivot after authorities revoked the license of her Secunderabad hospital.
Birth records submitted to municipal corporations were brazenly falsified, supplanting the biological parents’ identities with those of the paying couples, thereby perpetrating a fraud on public records and statutory registries.
The ED probe, spanning back to 2014, exposes the racket’s persistence despite multiple FIRs, suspension of her medical license, and regulatory interventions.
Undeterred, Dr. Namratha continued her nefarious enterprise, defrauding numerous couples through cheques and cash infusions. Proceeds were siphoned as commissions to intermediaries and biological parents, with bank account analyses confirming the money trail funds from victims funnelled to agents, thence to trafficked infants’ origins clear hallmarks of proceeds of crime under Section 3 of the PMLA.
Properties standing in Dr. Namratha’s name and those of her sons were provisionally identified as tainted assets, with cash payments traced directly to laundered proceeds, inviting attachment proceedings under PMLA protocols.
In a decisive enforcement action, the ED arrested Dr. Namratha on February 12, 2026, invoking Section 19 of the PMLA.
She remains in judicial custody, as confirmed by the competent court. Further investigations into accomplices, asset trails, and victim restitution are underway, signalling the Directorate’s firm resolve to dismantle such exploitative syndicates that prey on human vulnerability.
