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Sharon Van Epps remembers the day she first held Haseena, with her
rich black hair and dark eyes. The baby, just beginning to walk, did
not make a sound, just held on to her tightly. ''I felt like something
I'd been missing my whole life that I didn't even know I'd been missing
had been found,'' she recalled. Van Epps, an American free-lance writer,
saw Haseena nearly every day afterward, bonding with the girl she
hoped to adopt with her husband, John Clements, a partner in a major
accounting firm. The couple had received nearly all the necessary
approvals from agencies in the United States and India, and Van Epps
expected to leave Hyderabad with Haseena within two months. But that
was 15 months ago, and since then she has been locked in battle with
a small but determined group of activists. Led by Gita Ramaswamy,
a longtime union organizer-turned-book publisher, the group argues
that the foreign adoption system in India is riddled with corruption
and encourages trafficking in baby girls, who are often seen as a
burden by poor families. In some cases, the police say, babies have
been sold by their parents for as little as $20 Van Epps, 37, and
Ramaswamy, 50, are fighting it out in the state of Andhra Pradesh,
but Ramaswamy wants a nationwide moratorium on foreign adoptions
for several years. Last year, according to the Indian government,
American and European families adopted nearly 800 children from India,
compared with 1,200 in-country adoptions. The numbers may not seem
large for a country of a billion people, but Indian law allows only
Hindus and Buddhists to adopt; Christians, Muslims and Jews in India
may only become guardians. For Van Epps and other Westerners seeking
to adopt here, the only number that counts is one ã the child they
are seeking. Van Epps' experience has left her pained and angry. '
'I am a test case for them,'' she said. Ramaswamy insists that the
dispute is not personal. ''We're not working on Haseena not going
abroad,'' said Ramaswamy, whose five sisters live in the United States.
''We're working for changes in the system.'' Ramaswamy says poverty
and the degradation of women in Indian society are the reasons that
so many poor women sell their baby daughters. Rather than address
these problems, the Indian government allows foreigners to adopt babies
as a partial solution, she said. What really drives baby trafficking,
she says, is demand from wealthy Western couples. Poor women do not
go around offering their babies, she said, but are persuaded to sell
by offers of what to them are irresistible amounts of money. Ramaswamy
and her colleagues have sought to portray Van Epps as a rich American
who is throwing her weight around. Two U.S. senators have written
letters on her behalf, and the U.S. Embassy has made inquiries about
the case, though it has remained neutral. ''Her faith in the power
of the color of her skin, and the superpower status of her country,
is so strong'' that she is convinced ''she must win,'' Ramaswamy
wrote in April in a commentary against foreign adoptions in the Deccan
Chronicle, the state's leading English-language daily. Ramaswamy and
her group have publicly asserted that Haseena was trafficked, though
Ramaswamy conceded in an interview that there was no hard evidence
that Haseena had been bought by the orphanage. She said there were
serious doubts, however, about the authenticity of the so-called relinquishment
document, which was ''signed'' ã with a fingerprint ã by a woman claiming
to be Haseena's mother. She was, the document said, an illiterate,
unmarried 20-year-old peasant who said she was offering Haseena,
then 6 months old, for adoption because of the stigma in India of
raising a child born out of wedlock. Even if Haseena had been bought,
there is no evidence that Van Epps knew this. Indian law requires
that before a child can be adopted by foreigners, he or she must first
be offered to an Indian couple; then to an Indian couple living abroad;
then to a couple with one Indian spouse. On March 23, 2001, the Central
Adoption Resource Agency, the federal body in India that regulates
adoptions, said the government had ''no objection to the placement'
' of Haseena with foreigners, after another agency had said it could
find no Indian parents because the girl had mildly deformed feet.
But a month later, before Van Epps and Clements could petition the
family court for approval, the police in Andhra Pradesh uncovered
a baby-selling ring. Baby girls were being bought from poor families
and brought to orphanages, which in turn made them available to foreign
applicants, who pay more for a child than do Indians seeking to adopt.
After the scandal, two orphanages in Andhra Pradesh were closed. A
few months later, baby-trafficking charges were filed against St.
Theresa's Tender Loving Care Home, the orphanage where Haseena was
living. The case is pending, and the orphanage remains open, though
its license has not been renewed. Sister Teresa Marie, the 69-year
old nun who runs the orphanage, denied that it had ever engaged in
baby-trafficking. She said the charges were politically motivated.
Of the 33 children at the home now, Sister Teresa said, 2 were expected
to go to Italy, 2 to Germany, 2 to Spain, 10 to Minnesota and several
to California. Ramaswamy and her colleagues have mounted an effort
to find Indian parents for these and other baby girls in the process
of being adopted by Americans and Europeans. One Indian couple, B.
Venkata Subrahmanyam, a businessman, and his wife, have come forward
for Haseena. About two weeks ago, the state agency for Women Development
and Child Welfare wrote to the court that Subrahmanyam's desire to
adopt Haseena ''does not come out of love and affection for the child.'
' Its director added that there was ''strong reason to believe'' that
Subrahmanyam was acting ''on account of certain external pressures,
'' a clear reference to foreign adoption opponents. Subrahmanyam dismissed
that notion as ''absolutely rubbish.'' In a telephone interview, he
said it was the welfare agency that had acted under external pressure
ã from the U.S. government. On May 28, the state removed Haseena from
the Tender Loving Care Home and placed her in the state-run Sishu
Vihar orphanage here. The head of that orphanage declined requests
to be interviewed. Since June 7, the state authorities have not allowed
Van Epps to see Haseena. But every afternoon, she shows up at the
orphanage, hoping she will be granted permission. On a recent day,
sitting outside in a car, she looked dejected, holding a photo album
with pictures of the little girl. ''When I open it now,'' she said,
''I just cry.''
