After detaining the seller and the buyer of a little boy at Bo De Pagoda in Hanoi, police on Monday confirmed that the infant had died in the Central Pediatrics Hospital in the capital city in late June.
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The boy, Cu Nguyen Cong, also called Pham Gia Bao, died on June 27, 2014, when he was only eight months old, after contracting measles, police said. The boy had been taken to the infirmary by Pham Thi Nguyet, 35, of Hoang Mai District, who bought the boy for VND35 million ($1,650) from Nguyen Thi Thanh Trang, 37, the caretaker of the children supported by Bo De Pagoda in Long Bien District. According to an agreement between Nguyet and Trang, VND30 ($1,415) million of the amount would be given to Tran Thi Thu H., 25, the infant’s biological mother who had left her son at the pagoda, and the remaining VND5 million ($236) to Trang. However, Trang transferred only VND10 million ($472) to H., a native of northern Phu Tho Province, and pocketed the remaining amount, investigators said. In late October 2013, pregnant H. and her boyfriend stayed at Nhue Giang Hotel in Hanoi while waiting for the woman to give birth at a hospital. But H. was delivered of a boy at the hotel on October 26, 2013. As they could not afford to bring up their son, the couple brought the newborn to Bo De Pagoda and left him there. The couple wrote a statement on leaving the boy under the pagoda’s care, and they submitted their copied ID cards to the pagoda, where Trang was working as a child caretaker. Then H. sometimes visited the pagoda to give gifts to her son. At that time, a man whose name is Nguyen Thanh Long visited the pagoda and accidentally met the boy. Long liked the abandoned boy, adopting him and naming the kid Cu Nguyen Cong. In November 2013, the boy became ill and Long, in conjunction with the pagoda, took him to a hospital for treatment. On December 31 last year, Trang asked Long to bring the boy back to the pagoda, saying that a team was inspecting the pagoda. On January 4, 2014, Long arrived at the pagoda and Trang told him that the boy had been taken back by his mother, H. In fact, Trang sold the boy to Nguyet, who was seeking to adopt a child, on January 1, 2104, according to investigators. After buying the boy, Nguyet renamed him Pham Gia Bao, who caught measles in May or June 2014 and died on June 27. At the time of her arrest, Nguyet was found taking care of two other children at her rented house in Hoang Mai District, investigators said. The kids are Nguyen Gia Huy, two years old, the son of a woman in Hanoi, and Tran Vu Gia Han, one year old, mothered by another woman in northern Thai Binh Province. The two children have been brought to a social center for care. Nguyet and Trang have been charged with “trading in, fraudulently exchanging or appropriating children” pursuant to Article 120 of the Penal Code, police said.
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