An Indonesian court has convicted 19 people for operating a baby-trafficking network that sold at least 34 infants for illegal adoption between 2023 and 2025, with the 70-year-old ringleader, Lie Siu Luan, sentenced to seven years in prison. The panel of judges at the Bandung District Court found the defendants guilty of crimes committed “for the purpose of exploitation”, including recruitment, forgery of adoption documents, and the cross-border transfer of babies to Singapore. Prosecutors had sought a 10-year term for Lie, who admitted to sending at least 12 infants to contacts in Singapore in exchange for payments of around S$17,000 per child. The remaining 18 defendants, who acted as recruiters, caregivers, and women posing as biological mothers, received prison terms ranging from three to six and a half years.

According to Indonesian prosecutors, the syndicate sourced infants from multiple locations in West Java province, housed them with hired nannies, and then transported them via Jakarta to adoptive parents in Singapore. Singapore’s government announced in 2026 that it was suspending citizenship applications for children adopted from Indonesia while investigations continued. At least 12 of the trafficked babies are believed to still be in Singapore, and some children rejected by prospective clients there were sold domestically, including to families in Jakarta. Lie told the court she “did not know it was wrong” to send babies abroad for adoption, a claim her lawyer said the defence accepted after the verdict.

The fate of the trafficked children remains unresolved. Indonesian anti-trafficking and child rights organisations argue that, as a matter of principle, infants should be returned to their biological parents wherever possible. However, authorities have not yet identified all the parents, meaning some children may have no family to return to and could become wards of the state. Legal analysts in Singapore note that revoking an adoption in a trafficking case would be legally complex and has no precedent in the city-state’s courts, leaving both governments to navigate an untested process.

The case came to light after a father in West Java reported his newborn son as kidnapped, triggering police raids that rescued several infants before they could be sold. Viewed from Jakarta, the convictions underscore the persistent challenge of human trafficking across the Indonesian archipelago, where a 2022 case saw at least 57 people found caged on a palm oil plantation in North Sumatra. At least one defendant intends to appeal the verdict, and bilateral discussions between Indonesian and Singaporean authorities on the children’s legal status are expected in the coming weeks.