The Allahabad High Court has dismissed a petition, saying the year in which the petitioner had sought appointment, then the term “adopted son” was not included under the definition of family.

A single-judge bench of Justice Saurabh Shyam Shamshery passed this order while hearing a petition filed by Sanjay Kumar Singh.

The writ petition was filed in 2003 and was dismissed in default on 11.11.2005. A restoration application was filed on 30.08.2007 along with delay condonation application, i.e, after one year and eleven months. Thereafter, the matter remained pending before the Court.

he petitioner claimed to be an adopted son of late Ram Achal Singh through an adoption deed dated 23.10.1990. Ram Achal Singh died in harness on 31.01.1995. The counsel for the petitioner submitted that the petitioner was given assurance for compassionate appointment, therefore, he remained silent. However, on 17.08.1999, he submitted an application for compassionate appointment. Meanwhile, a declaratory suit was also filed by petitioner, which was allowed in his favour and he was declared adopted son of late Ram Achal Singh.

The counsel for the petitioner further submitted that application of petitioner for compassionate appointment remained pending before respondents and on 17.10.2001 Respondent-2 sent a communication to petitioner wherein the adoption deed was doubted. In these circumstances, the petitioner again moved an application on 12.11.2001. However, by means of the order dated 15.09.2003, the claim of petitioner was rejected on the ground that adopted son was not included in the definition of ‘family’ under Uttar Pradesh Recruitment of Dependents of Government Servants Dying in Harness Rules, 1974. The order is under challenge in writ petition.

Experts say need to look beyond custodial needs of children and focus on nurturing families

In a country with millions of orphans, there are only 2,430 children available for adoption while the number of parents desiring to bring home a child is growing rapidly. To address this paradox, a Parliamentary panel has recommended district-level surveys to proactively identify orphaned and abandoned children.

A report recently tabled on “Review of Guardianship and Adoption Laws” in Parliament by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances and Law and Justice has said, “it is important to get a true picture of number of children who are orphaned/abandoned through a district-level survey and the data needs to be updated on a regular basis.”

It has suggested that a monthly meeting chaired by the District Magistrate should be held in every district to “ensure that orphan and abandoned children found begging in streets are produced before the Child Welfare Committee and are made available for adoption at the earliest.”

According to the report, there were 27,939 prospective parents registered with the Child Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) as on December 2021, up from nearly 18,000 in 2017. In comparison, though there were a total 6,996 orphaned, abandoned and surrendered children residing in childcare institutions considered adoptable, only 2,430 were declared “legally free” for adoption by Child Welfare Committees. The waiting time for adoption too has increased to three years from one year in the past five years. The total number of children adopted in 2021-2022 was only 3,175.

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In Denmark, the state is taking more and more strict action in what it sees as the interests of the child. Those who are not deemed fit to be parents are even told during pregnancy that their children will be forcibly adopted.

To avoid losing their children, many Danish parents are fleeing to nearby countries, especially to the German border city of Flensburg. There, we meet Hanne - a mother of four children, three of whom have already been taken into care by Danish authorities - and Kenneth, who is trying to make a new life in Flensburg with his eight-year-old son. A report by Gunnar Köhne.

NEW DELHI: A parliamentary panel in a report on the review of guardianship and adoption laws has highlighed that with few children available in the adoption pool, average time taken for prospective adoptive parents (PAPs) registered with the Central Adoption Resources Authority (CARA) to get a referral for children in the age group of 0-4 years is approximately two years.

The report tabled in the just concluded monsoon session of Parliament on Monday noted with “grave concern” that as per the adoption statistics of CARA, the number of children adopted in the country declined from 5,693 in 2010 to 3,142 in 2020-21. Also the number of children taken in inter-country adoption showed a sharp fall from 628 in 2010 to 417 in 2020-21.

As per the information furnished by CARA, as on December 16, 2021, as many as 26,734 PAPs had registered with CARA and are waiting for referral for in-country adoption and 1,205 prospective adoptive parents were awaiting inter-country adoption. As per the information furnished to the department related parliamentary standing committee on personnel, public grievances, law and justice, by the ministry of women and child development, the average time taken for PAPs to get a referral for children in the age group of 0-4 years is approximately two years. Data provided by CARA, as on December 16, 2021, shows that a total of 6,996 orphaned/abandoned/surrendered children are residing in child care institutions linked with specialised adoption agencies, out of which 2,430 were declared legally free for adoption and 4,566 children were in process at different levels prior to being declared legally free for adoption by the child welfare committees.

The committee took note of the “paradoxical situation” where on one hand there are a large number of parents willing to adopt a child, on the other, there are not many children available for adoption.

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Lydia (39, occupational therapist in elderly care) and Jaco (39, training advisor in a hospital) have two children: Rebekah (10) and Sam (4). The children were both adopted when they were 2.5 and come from the same orphanage in Johannesburg.

something wrong

Lydia: 'After trying for a year and a half to get pregnant, we went to see the doctor. Maybe something is wrong, we thought. This turned out to be the case after research: we had a zero percent chance of a pregnancy. A hard message. The door was closed, but that quickly gave us room to think about other options. Like adoption.

this is me

Jaco had a colleague who was in an adoption process. Not long after our conversation with him, we also signed up. From that moment it took five years, with both children, before we could hold them in our arms.

A parliamentary standing committee has expressed serious concern over the decline in the number of children coming to adoption agencies over the years, saying it points to trafficking or a thriving illegal child adoption market.

The committee on personnel, public grievances, law and justice tabled its report on the review of guardianship and adoption laws in Parliament in the recently concluded Monsoon session.

The committee stressed the need to increase surveillance, especially on unregistered child care institutions and adoption agencies/hospitals with the past record of trafficking.

The committee also expresses serious concern about decline in the number of children coming to adoption agencies over the years. This decline, by and large, points to trafficking or a thriving illegal child adoption market, the report stated.

The committee stressed it is important to get a true picture of the number of children who are orphaned/abandoned through a district-level survey and the data needs to be updated on a regular basis.

Disabled children are being abused and neglected in institutions across Ukraine, UN experts have warned.

The human rights officials said the war had made their situation even worse and called on the Ukrainian government to right its "historic wrongs".

Their statement comes after a BBC News investigation uncovered widespread abuse in the country's orphanages.

There were more than 100,000 children and young people living in institutions before the war.

When Russia invaded in February, thousands of disabled people were removed from the institutions and sent back to their families.

Two sisters who were adopted as babies and lived thousands of miles apart have been reunited thanks to a home DNA test.

The popularity of at-home DNA testing has boomed in recent years, as anyone can purchase a simple kit for themselves or a loved one and uncover secrets hidden in their own DNA.

MyHeritage, a leading genealogy site, ran a pro bono initiative called DNA Quest in 2018, where it donated 15,000 tests to adoptees to support them in being reunited with their birth families through DNA testing. This resulted in hundreds of reunions, according to the company. Sisters Ashleigh Brown and Laurinda Collado are one of those.

Brown and Collado are now aged 33 and 35. Born in the Dominican Republic to the same biological parents, Collado was adopted when she was 5 months old and raised as an only child in Bristol, Connecticut. Two years later, her adoptive parents were given the choice to take in her sister Ashleigh but they chose not to. Instead, Brown was adopted at 6 weeks old and grew up in Barbados.

While each knew that they had biological siblings somewhere, they lived with the fear that they might never meet their biological family, with nothing but pictures of their biological parents in baby albums. It wasn't until the DNA Quest initiative was launched by MyHeritage that they were able to take steps to find each other.

The timeline of the case that took 28 years to bring justice to the victim was recently shared by Uttar Pradesh police.

Gang-raped at the age of 12, a woman’s remarkable journey to justice come to fruition recently. The timeline of the case that took 28 years to bring justice for the victim was recently shared by Uttar Pradesh police.

The young girl was raped by two individuals in 1994 at the age of 12. She had been living with her sister and brother-in-law in Shajahanpur when the accused barged into her home and gang-raped her.

The rape led to her becoming pregnant and she gave birth to a child at the age of 13. She was forced to part ways with her child in 1996 who was taken in by a couple in another district. The family migrated to Rampur.

The victim tried to restart her life and married another man. However, he divorced her after 10 years when he became aware of the gang-rape that she had been subjected to.