Mother is caught selling her newborn baby on the black market.

In a story that's shocked parents everywhere, a mother has been detained in Russia for “selling her newborn girl for $21,200 on the black market”.

This is the third recent case of this kind, where the woman allegedly handed over her baby to a totally unknown couple just one week after the birth.

The mother, named Barnokhon Rasulzhan Kyzy, 23, then wrote out a receipt to say she had received the one million rouble payment, according to Russian police.

However she was snared by an anti-slavery group called Alternative, who were working with undercover police after they spotted her advertisement to trade the baby.

The same young woman had apparently previously tried and failed to sell her elder daughter when she was aged around one, for the same amount of cash, it is alleged.

The mother confessed in full and has now been detained for six months while a criminal investigation takes place.

The woman, a resident of Ufa, faces up to six years in jail if convicted.

“The life of the child is not now in danger,” said a source in the Russian Investigative Committee.

Activists from the anti-slavery group had posed as buyers answering her advertisement to sell the child.

Oleg Melnikov, head of the anti-slavery group, claimed they saved the child at the last minute.

“We prevented the sale of a newborn girl who could fall into the hands of the criminals,” he said.

The baby girl is in care and likely to be put up for adoption - her two other children, aged four and nearly two, are also in care

Last week Vladimir Tsurkanu, of the Russian Investigative Committee, warned there was a new trend of babies being put up for sale.

In one, a mother was accused of selling her newborn boy for $125.