New Delhi: Mukesh, a 40-year-old truck driver, and wife Reema, a 38-year-old homemaker, were a childless couple in Gwalior. Married for at least eight years, they wanted a baby.They had done the rounds of IVF centres and hospitals. Nothing had worked out. Their treatments sometimes brought them to Delhi-NCR. During one such visit in July last year, the couple met Pratibha in an IVF centre in Delhi. Pratibha was supposedly a freelance lab technician working at the facility. They wanted a child. Pratibha said she could help.She took them to Dr Viveki’s facility, Hira’s Multispeciality Hospital in Begum Pur, Rohini. Reema was examined there and told that she could not have a child. It was there, police sources said, that Pratibha and Viveki offered to arrange for a male infant if the couple could pay Rs 8 lakh.Mukesh and Reema agreed, although they did not have Rs 8 lakh at that time.The couple returned to Gwalior and told their family that Reema was pregnant. Mukesh collected his savings and borrowed money from relatives to arrange for the payment.They were also told that they would need to pay Rs 1 lakh for treatments, though what those procedures were is unclear as any IVF treatment was now unnecessary.In Sept last year, the couple returned to Delhi. To friends and relatives, this visit was for Reema’s “treatment”. What they did, though, was rent a house in Gurgaon and begin living there.They were now part of an interstate child trafficking racket that would eventually bring police to their door.From Gurgaon, Reema sent photographs to relatives of her growing baby bump, which later turned out to be a pillow. Police said that during the investigation their relatives shared photos of the fabricated pregnancy.The charade was kept alive for nine months. The couple was promised a baby boy in June this year.As the date neared, they came to know from the IVF centre that if they paid a lakh more, they could have a girl too. They could pass them off as twins, the couple was told.This infant girl had been abandoned by her mother at an IVF centre and Dr Viveki’s associates had found her. The boy that Reema was supposedly about to birth was being smuggled to the Rohini hospital from Pali in Madhya Pradesh.The babies were handed over to Mukesh and Reema on June 16.Fooling relatives was not the only fraud that the couple and thei gang pulled off. The fake pregnancy and births needed fake paperwork. Police said that fake records were made, claiming that Reema had delivered twins inside a car at 2.50 am and 3.05 am on June 17, a day after the babies were handed over to the couple.The documents also showed that she remained admitted at Viveki’s hospital for three days after June 17.When questioned, Viveki initially denied any involvement in this case. But hospital records gave away that someone called Reema had been a patient there. When the investigators started looking for the car in which Reema had supposedly given birth, there was none. The couple never owned any car.Viveki and Pratibha were arrested. So were Mukesh and Reema, who had left for Gwalior with their “twins”.“The children were rescued from Gwalior. They were found to be living in good condition,” an officer said.Mukesh and Reema were not the only couple to be caught. Police also arrested Sunny (37) and Ritu Arora (38) from Panipat, a childless couple married for a decade, who wanted to adopt a baby. Sunny had a fabric business.He allegedly contacted Pratibha about five months ago after being referred to her at an IVF centre in Gurgaon.According to police, the trafficking gang members allegedly took them near a court, handed them stamp papers and claimed that the adoption process was complete. They were given a male infant for Rs 6 lakh.Despite knowing that legal adoption involves a different process, the couple went ahead with the arrangement and took the infant home.Like Reema, Ritu told her family she was pregnant and eventually introduced the child as her own. Their life as new parents came to an end when police came calling at Panipat earlier this month.