Impoverished parents are putting their children for sale for a few thousand rupees in Karnataka villages a short distance from Bangalore, the country's glitzy IT hub.These children, some even newborns, are being sold with the help of greedy middlemen for Rs 6,000 to Rs 8,000. Those about three and four years old have been given away in exchange for Rs 10,000.

In the last one week alone, six families in Tiptur taluk of Tumkur district sold their children to prosperous families. Expectedly, adoption procedures were not followed in these cases. But the tragic sale of children has brought the focus on another tragedy -- abject poverty.

The biological parents of the children so far tracked down by the police - most of them have taken the brunt of the price collapse in the coconut market - say they are too poor to look after their kids.

Incidents of selling infants are on the rise in Tumkur in southern Karnataka, where many families have become jobless due to the economic downturn. Several instances of selling children have been reported from Tiptur, one of the highest producers of coconut in Karnataka.