Update | Shaanxi obstetrician sentenced to death for selling babies
Court convicts obstetrician for child trafficking and sentences her to death with a two-year reprieve
The Shaanxi doctor who sold newborn babies to child-traffickers for as little as 1,000 yuan (HK$1,270) was yesterday handed the death sentence, suspended for two years.
Zhang Shuxia, a former obstetrician at the Fuping Maternal and Child Health Care Hospital, was convicted of tricking parents into giving up their babies by altering test results to show the children had congenital or infectious diseases.
She sold seven babies to a middleman, who later resold the babies in Shandong and Henan provinces between November 2011 and July. Zhang pocketed over 100,000 yuan, the prosecutors said; the middleman made more than 200,000 yuan, according to the Jinghua Daily.
Six of the babies were rescued by police, but a baby girl voluntarily given up by her parents and sold for just 1,000 yuan in April later died.
The doctor claimed she did not know the middleman was a human-trafficker. She thought she was "doing good" by selling babies to infertile couples.
But at the end of a one-day trial on December 30, Zhang read a tearful apology to the victims, saying: "I feel guilty and deeply apologise to the families … I violated the laws and deserve to be punished."