At least 30 babies born to Ukrainian surrogate mothers have reportedly been illegally sold in the Czech Republic since 2019. Six employees of a fertility clinic are suspected of having earned 1.2 million euros with child trafficking.

Vienna, Prague, Kyiv – At least 30 babies are said to have been illegally sold to foreigners in the Czech Republic since 2019 after the babies were born to Ukrainian surrogate mothers in Prague. According to Kathpress, the Vienna Institute for Medical Anthropology and Bioethics (IMABE) reported this on Monday with reference to the Czech media portal Seznam Zprávy . IMABE Managing Director Susanne Kummer has criticized surrogacy as a "deeply unethical practice at the expense of women and children".

The focus of the Czech investigation is therefore the Ukrainian agency Feskov-Human Reproduction Group with locations in Kharkiv, Kyiv and Prague. Clinic operator Alexander Feskov has been accused of human trafficking in Ukraine since last year, according to IMABE. In the meantime, six employees of the fertility clinic are also suspected of having earned 1.2 million euros with child trafficking.

The Feskov Clinic advertises a "remote guarantee program": customers or contract parents do not have to travel to Ukraine for a child via surrogacy. Both the "reproductive program" and confinement could take place depending on the country of choice. This would make it possible to circumvent stricter national laws. Because: According to Ukrainian law, only infertile and married couples are allowed for surrogacy. However, single men who wish to have children and homosexual couples from all over the world were also among Feskov's customers.

60,000 to 70,000 euros per child "ready for collection".

The Delhi High Court has sought for the presence of CEO of Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) over the authority's failure to file a timely response in a bunch of petitions concerning inter-country adoptions.

The development came after Justice Pratibha M Singh in February this year sought response of CARA on the framework for facilitating adoptions in case of children who have been orphaned during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Court has been dealing with three cases relating to international adoption of Indian children.

In all three cases, the children, as also their biological parents were in India but the adoptive parents have settled abroad. The adoptions were carried out under the provisions of HAMA. However, certain challenges were faced in movement of the children abroad, including in obtaining passports and visas. The adoptive parents were required to obtain a NOC from CARA.

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Kolkata: A steep rise in preference for adopting girls has also been noticed. In 2019-’20, the total number of girl adoptions was 122, with 86 boy adoptions. While the whole country has seen a decrease in the total girl adoption rate, Bengal saw a 9.2% increase in girl adoptions, compared with before the pandemic.

Behala Resident Ritayan Pal, 36, and his wife had applied for adoption three years back and finally completed the process to adopt a two-month-old girl during the second wave of the pandemic in 2021. “Amid the gloom of Covid, she has brought light and joy to our family,” said Pal.

The ratio of girls adopted in Bengal in respect to the entire country was 5.5% before the pandemic. This touched 6.6% during the pandemic.

Shashi Panja, Bengal’s minister of women and child development and social welfare, said adoption was a regular, ongoing and transparent process.

“The pandemic has not affected the adoption rate. As it is a process that takes 3-4 years, we did not stop the process because of the pandemic,” she said. She added that the app ‘Sneho Chaya’, which was developed by the Bengal government to track orphans, their problems and needs during Covid, had helped adoptions as well.

The Juvenile Justice Committee (JJC) of the Andhra Pradesh High Court on Monday enquired about the alleged child trafficking and surrogacy racket in Eluru district.

The JJC, which took suo moto notice of the alleged sale of an infant in Pedavegi mandal in Eluru district, asked officials about the details of the case.

Principal Secretaries of the concerned departments, Eluru Deputy Superintendent of Police G.V.V.S. Pydeswara Rao and Two Town CI D.V. Ramana appeared before the JJC.

The JJC, while expressing concern over the alleged sale of babies, directed the officers to take steps to prevent recurrence of such incidents.

This figure of the Belgian banking world who worked within the foundation for the protection of children, died on July 26, at the age of 91.

Baron Daniel Cardon de Lichtbuer, who had a leading role in the creation of Child Focus and its European counterpart, Missing Children Europe, which he both chaired, died on July 26 at the age of 91. , announced Child Focus in an obituary published on its site. A great figure in the Belgian banking world, the man was notably at the head of BBL, which later became ING Belgium.

Born November 16, 1930 in Brasschaat (Antwerp), Daniel Cardon de Lichtbuer grew up in a French-speaking bourgeois environment. With a doctorate in law and a degree in applied economics from UCL, the man continued his career at the European Coal and Steel Community and then at the European Economic Community as chief of staff between 1957 and 1974.

In 1973, he became a director of the Banque de Bruxelles, then a member of the executive committee of this financial institution the following year. Two years later, he became managing director and member of the management committee of the merged bank BBL (Banque Bruxelles Lambert) before taking over the management of the latter in 1992.

After an aborted plan to create a “Great Belgian Bank” which would have brought together BBL, Générale de Banque (future Fortis Bank) and Crédit Communal (which became Dexia then Belfius), Daniel Cardon de Lichtbuer left BBL in 1997, just before its takeover by the Dutch company ING.

Juvenile Justice Committee takes suo moto notice of sale of infant

The Juvenile Justice Committee (JJC) of the Andhra Pradesh High Court on Monday enquired about the alleged child trafficking and surrogacy racket in Eluru district.

The JJC, which took suo moto notice of the alleged sale of an infant in Pedavegi mandal in Eluru district, asked officials about the details of the case.

Principal Secretaries of the concerned departments, Eluru Deputy Superintendent of Police G.V.V.S. Pydeswara Rao and Two Town CI D.V. Ramana appeared before the JJC.

The JJC, while expressing concern over the alleged sale of babies, directed the officers to take steps to prevent recurrence of such incidents.

Throw us into jail, but repatriate our child to India,” says Bhavesh Shah. “In any case, without her home is like a jail,” he adds. Bhavesh, a software developer, arrived in Germany in 2018 on a work visa. His wife Dhara delivered a baby girl in February 2021 in Berlin. When the baby was seven months old, she suffered an injury.

What happened thereafter might seem fairly uncomplicated, but in a foreign context, it assumed nightmarish proportions.

On September 23, 2021, the child protection agency made the Shahs sign a document whose contents were in German and, took the baby away. The translator was Urdu-speaking and knew no Gujarati. The Gujarati-speaking Shahs don’t know Urdu. They know Hindi, though not enough to understand legalese.

The incident has since become a legal battle. It transpired that the visiting paternal grandmother had inadvertently caused the injury but was too embarrassed to speak up. The criminal case against the Shahs was closed post-investigation, but the civil custody case is on. In the meantime, somewhere in an undisclosed location, in foster care, their baby has started to walk.

The Shahs have their own set of complaints beginning with the removal of a breastfeeding baby from its mother; of language as a hurdle in communication at every step with every institutional set-up; of decreased frequency of permitted visitations and cultural obdurateness — their request to let the baby be raised on a vegan/vegetarian diet has been ignored.

A 7-year-old boy was found dead inside of a washing machine just hours after his parents reported him missing Thursday.

At about 5.20am Thursday, the parents of Troy Khoeler filed a missing persons report with police, Lt Robert Minchew of the Harris County Sheriff’s Office said during a press conference.

When police officers arrived at the home of Troy’s parents in Spring, Texas, the distraught couple said the boy had been missing since about 4am.

After the parents partook in a brief interview for the missing persons report, deputies found there were ‘signs’ indicating that they should search the house in its entirety for the boy.

Minchew could not say what those signs were, or if it was standard procedure, but authorities also searched the immediate area outside the home for the boy.

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has ruled that a biological mother can also be an “adoptive mother”. The ruling came in a case where a woman’s plea for adopting her daughter from her first marriage, after she tied the knot again, was dismissed by a Bhiwani family court.

During the course of hearing, the Bench of Justice Ritu Bahri and Justice Ashok Kumar Verma was told that the biological parents got a divorce vide judgment and decree dated April 25, 2016, passed by Sonepat District Judge (Family Court).

Thereafter, the mother solemnised the second marriage in September 2017. The two then filed the application under the provisions of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act for the seven-year-old girl’s adoption.

Along with the application and other documents, permission/consent by the biological parents for surrendering the minor’s custody to the step-parent, duly allowed and “stamped by the seal” of the Bhiwani Child Welfare Committee, was placed on record.

The minor’s consent that she wanted to stay with the biological mother and her second husband was also placed on record. But the application was rejected on the ground that a biological mother cannot become a mother in “dual status” — a biological mother as well as adoptive mother.

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