Armenia shocked by baby selling network as the country's top obstetrician and orphanage head are arrested over scheme that sold children to Westerners

The chief gynaecologist, the head of an orphanage and officials were arrested

The alleged black market adoption market has been operating for years

Syuzan Patvakanyan revealed she was blackmailed into giving up her baby

Armenia has launched an investigation into an apparent underground baby-selling network.

The country's chief obstetrician-gynaecologist, the head of an orphanage and other officials have been arrested as part of the probe.

The alleged black market adoption scheme is believed to have been operating for years.

Syuzan Patvakanyan, 35, has been searching for her daughter ever since doctors in the former Soviet country forced her to give her up as a baby nearly two decades ago.

She accused the detained chief gynaecologist, Razmik Abramyan, and other doctors of pressuring her to give up her baby.

She was just a teenager when she 'fell madly in love' with a man five years her senior, she said.

After the 16-year-old gave birth to a little girl, doctors threatened to report the baby's father to police for having sex with a minor and coerced Patvakanyan into signing a consent form to hand over their daughter Stella.

'I cried, I didn't want to do it,' Patvakanyan told AFP, tears streaming down her face.

She signed the papers under pressure but three days later she returned to the maternity ward to take Stella home.

The baby girl was no longer there however.

The doctors claimed she had been sent to an orphanage in the country's second largest city of Gyumri. But the young mum could not locate her there either.

'We realised that the swaddled baby had been sold right out of the hospital,' the distraught woman said.

Patvakanyan now appears to be one of dozens of women caught up in an underground baby-selling network that is now the subject of an official investigation.

In December, investigators said they had detained Abramyan, as well as the heads of a maternity ward and an orphanage in the capital Yerevan.

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