Nanjing City police have cracked one of China's biggest child-trafficking cases, rescuing 40 babies and detaining 47 suspects, the Beijing News reported today.

The police had investigated the case for about 100 days since May 25, when they found four middle-aged women on a train heading from Kunming City, Yunnan Province, to Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, were suspected of trafficking babies.

The women confessed that the four babies they held were bought from Yunnan and they were prepared to sell the babies for a higher price, the report said.

Nanjing police set up a special team to investigate the case in Yunnan, tracing to a couple named Hu Zhou and Zhang Yan who allegedly led a group to trade babies.

The group bought 27 new-born babies from Gejiu City in Yunnan since 2005 and sold the babies to traffickers in Shandong Province, the report said.

(Shanghai Daily September 7, 2007)