A gang of cross-province baby traffickers has been brought to court whose members are expected to be sentenced next week.

The Shanghai Railway Transportation Intermediate Court held a hearing in Nanjing on Tuesday of an infant trafficking case in which 23 suspects are implicated.

They were charged with trafficking a total of 41 babies over the past three years, the Nanjing-based Modern Express reported yesterday.

"The verdict will be handed down next week," an official surnamed Huang said in court yesterday.

The main suspects, 46-year-old Shen Yuzhou and his wife Lang Chunyan, were charged with trafficking babies from Yunnan province between 2005 and May, 2007. The babies, most of whom were less than one month old, were taken by middle-aged women hired by the couple on trains to buyers in Shandong province.

The suspicions of policemen patrolling train K156 from Kunming to Nanjing on May 24, 2007 were raised by four women carrying infants.

The women fed the babies milk formula rather than breastfeeding them, and avoided conversation with their fellow passengers. When questioned, the women admitted that the babies had actually been bought from Yunnan.

The Nanjing railway police immediately put a special team of more than 10 policemen on the case.

The team arrived in Yunnan on May 27 and arrested Dao Xiufeng, who snatched the babies in Yuanyang county, Yunnan, and other suspects. Both Shen and Lang were later arrested. All the infants rescued are now in the care of Nanjing Orphanage and other orphanages in the province.

(China Daily July 10, 2008)